StupidiNews!

• Some 19 tourists in the Egyptian city of Luxor are dead after a hot air balloon plummeted to the ground after exploding.
• KFC has stopped sourcing chickens from over 1,000 farms in China after last year's tainted chicken scandal cost them 6% in Chinese sales last year.
• Republicans will propose letting the federal government choose where to make $1.2 trillion in cuts, but will do nothing to stop them with their last-minute sequester bill.
• With over 55% of Italians voting for the two parties opposed to austerity in Sunday's elections, world markets continue to drop on renewd Eurozone crisis fears.
• Evidence in Siberian caves could mean that a small rise in global temperatures could melt the entire Siberian permafrost, unleashing tons of carbon into the atmosphere.

Last Call

House GOP dipstick Steve "Let's immediately impeach Obama" Stockman continues to try to out-stupid the rest of the clowns in his caucus with this nonsense:

"Obama's anti-gun campaign is a fraud," Stockman said. "Obama's supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress," he added. "I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign."

Wait a minute.  He has proof that the vast majority of Americans, including Republicans, who support universal background checks, are a fraud?  Oh do proceed, Congressman.

Stockman said that in response to Obama's call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.

Never heard of retweets, I guess.

"The other 10 are fake, computer-generated spambots," his office said in a press release. As evidence, he said these 10 tweets use default graphics and names, and have not engaged in any interaction with other people. Two of the tweets were sent at nearly the same time, and both follow just one person: Brad Schenck, Obama's former digital strategist.

So...that's his evidence?  Ten spambots on a social media site with millions of them means that 10 out of 16 of all gun control supporters don't actually exist?  Who's a big enough moron to take credit for this idiocy?

Oh, J.S. McCain.  Natch.

And then Stockman's office runs with this story?  Hooboy.  They don't grow em real smart down in Texas, do they.  Just go ahead and secede, guys.  Nobody'll miss you.

Also, hope Stockman doesn't figure out Horse_ebooks isn't real.

Or is he?

And Then It Really Hits Home

The damage from the "miniscule cuts" of the sequester will have deep impact on thousands of jobs in individual states, and here in the Cincy Tri-State of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, that means some serious cuts, starting with schools in Kentucky:

Kentucky will lose approximately $11.8 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 160 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 21,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 40 fewer schools would receive funding. In addition, Kentucky will lose approximately $7.7 million in funds for about 90 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities.

It gets worse for the Hoosier State:

Indiana will lose approximately $13.8 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 190 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 12,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 50 fewer schools would receive funding. In addition, Indiana will lose approximately $12.4 million in funds for about 150 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities.

And far worse for Ohio:

Ohio will lose approximately $25.1 million in funding for primary and secondary education, putting around 350 teacher and aide jobs at risk. In addition about 34,000 fewer students would be served and approximately 100 fewer schools would receive funding. In addition, Ohio will lose approximately $22 million in funds for about 270 teachers, aides, and staff who help children with disabilities. 

There's more than just schools that will be hit:  work study jobs, law enforcement, public safety, head Start, environmental programs, and more.  You can look up your state to see what sequestration means for where you live, and keep in mind Republicans have gone on record saying not only do they want these deep cuts, they want even more.

And they don't mind wrecking hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide to get those cuts.

Is it starting to hit home now, folks?

No, He Cantor

Ryan Lizza's piece in the New Yorker on GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor is thick with disappointment and hubris, and the goal appears to be absolving him of the guilt of 2012 to allow him to take credit in 2014 and 2016.

Cantor is the House Majority Leader, which means that he is responsible for the mundane business of managing the schedule, the House floor, and committees, where legislation is generally written. He has used his position to transform himself into the Party’s chief political strategist. Cantor is frequently talked about as a future Speaker; he could even be a future President, some of his aides say. Since the election, as Republicans have confronted Obama in a series of budgetary battles—another will unfold this week—few have tried as hard as Cantor to reposition and redefine the defeated party.

“He’s a fantastic Majority Leader,” Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and a close friend, said. “Eric keeps the trains running on time very efficiently.” As Mitt Romney’s former running mate and the architect of the budget policies that some Republicans blame for their loss in 2012, Ryan is well aware of his party’s problems. “What Eric is really focussed on is that we need to do a better job of broadening our appeal and showing that we have real ideas and solutions that make people’s lives better,” Ryan said. “Eric is the guy who studies the big vision and is doing the step-by-step, daily management of the process to get us there. That is a huge job.”

To recap, the losing VP candidate thinks Cantor is "fantastic".  That's all you need to know about the House GOP over the next 2 years, more likely 4, as they will continue doing what they are doing now, only worse and more of it.

Cantor was one of the most influential political forces in Obama’s first term. In June of 2011, the President and the Speaker began working toward a Grand Bargain of major tax increases and spending cuts to address the government’s long-term budget deficits. Until late June, Boehner had managed to keep these talks secret from Cantor. On July 21st, Boehner paused in his discussions with Obama to talk to Cantor and outline the proposed deal. As Obama waited by the phone for a response from the Speaker, Cantor struck. Cantor told me that it was a “fair assessment” that he talked Boehner out of accepting Obama’s deal. He said he told Boehner that it would be better, instead, to take the issues of taxes and spending to the voters and “have it out” with the Democrats in the election. Why give Obama an enormous political victory, and potentially help him win reëlection, when they might be able to negotiate a more favorable deal with a new Republican President? Boehner told Obama there was no deal. Instead of a Grand Bargain, Cantor and the House Republicans made a grand bet.

The bet failed spectacularly. Just as Cantor had urged, Obama and Romney spent much of the campaign debating tax and spending policies that the House Republicans had foisted on the Romney-Ryan ticket. What’s more, by scuttling the 2011 Grand Bargain negotiations, Cantor, more than any other politician, helped create the series of fiscal crises that have gripped Washington since Election Day. The failure of the Grand Bargain led to a byzantine deal: if the two parties could not agree on a new deficit plan, then a combination of tax increases and spending cuts—cuts known, in budget jargon, as a “sequester”—would automatically kick in on New Year’s Day. (The sequester was postponed until March 1st.) Looming beyond this “fiscal cliff” was an even more perilous fight, over the expiration of the debt ceiling, which is the limit on how much money the government can borrow, and which Congress must regularly raise if the Treasury is to pay its bills.

Lizza is correct here.  The mess we're in now is a direct result of Cantor's politically terminal case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.  Four years of manufactured crises designed to destroy the Democratic president backfired, so now those who voted for him must be punished by another four years of crises.

It really is negotiation with terrorists, and always has been.  And the man behind this tactic has been Cantor, not Boehner, from the beginning.

StupidiNews!

• Argo picked up Best Picture, Ang Lee surprised for Best Director for Life of Pi, and Daniel Day Lewis got his third Best Actor award at last night's Oscars.
• The failure of a major power station in southwest Pakistan ended up blacking out the entire country for two hours yesterday.
• The White House has released a state-by-state impact study of the effects of the steep sequester cuts that will go into effect Friday unless Congress acts.
• With the Eurozone's continuing recession, companies are stockpiling cash rather than investing in growth as sales decline.
• Sony has smashed into the android tablet market with the waterproof, super thin Xperia Z starting at $499.

More Makers And Takers

Glenn Reynolds is furious that states are giving Hollywood $1.5 billion a year in government handouts, just furious I tell you.

The $1.5 billion in subsidies that states provide, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "would have paid for the salaries of 23,500 middle school teachers, 26,600 firefighters, and 22,800 police patrol officers." Or it could have gone to cut taxes on small businesses, which, as Ms. Longoria noted in her DNC speech, produce two out of three jobs in the economy.

In her words: "It's the suburban dad who realizes his neighborhood needs a dry cleaner. It's the Latina nurse whose block needs a health clinic—and she knows she's the one to open it! It's the high school sophomore who is building Facebook's competitor. They are the entrepreneurs driving the American economy."

And they are the people who aren't receiving the kind of special tax treatment that states dole out to Hollywood.

"What are you going to do about that, libtards?  Huh?"

Why, point out the fact that $1.5 billion is what Reynolds' own state of Tennessee gives away in tax credits to profitable corporations every year, or 14%of the state's budget.  Funny how that works, Glenn.  Where's your outrage at Tennessee Republicans for passing these incentive programs and making the taxpayers of the Volunteer State pick up the tab when that $1.5 billion could be used for "the salaries of 23,500 middle school teachers, 26,600 firefighters, and 22,800 police patrol officers" or whatever?

And sure, Tennessee doesn't need 23,500 middle school teachers.  But they fired 150 teachers in Memphis because of budget cuts.  And you know who's giving away subsidies?  Why, the top subsidy in Tennessee is Memphis, giving $132 million to Electrolux.  How many jobs did that create?  I'm betting not a lot.

Oh, and let's not forget Tennessee is one of the taker states over the last 20 years, getting $80 billion in federal tax money more than it took in. And then they turn around and give that money to corporations.

Boy, Reynolds must really, really be upset with Tennessee Republicans over that.  Oh wait, he's not?

That would make him a hypocrite.  Imagine that.

The Moderate (Bigoted) Bobby Jindal

GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal doesn't seem to think that the Republican party needs to moderate its position on LGBT bigotry at all, and is convinced millions of LGBT voters will vote Republican based on three decades of economic policies that have failed.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) — a possible Republican candidate for president in 2016 — rejected former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s argument that conservatives must embrace marriage equality for gays and lesbians if they want to survive as a party and reiterated his support for “traditional marriage.”

“Look, I believe in the traditional definition of marriage,” Jindal said during an appearance on Meet The Press on Sunday, and went on to claim that Republicans don’t have to make the case on social issues to attract young voters and win future elections and instead should continue focusing on economic issues. “We lost [the 2012 election] because we didn’t present a vision showing how we believe the entire economy can grow, how people can join the middle class. We’re in aspirational party and we need policies that are consistant with that aspirational private sector growth.” 

Sure.  Republicans are aspirational if you're straight.  If you're LGBT, or believe that being so doesn't make you a second-class citizen, oh well.   Some Americans are more equal than others, and Republicans figure they don't the rest of us.

Last Call

That's funny, wingers.  I thought sequestration cuts were "miniscule".  Mary Katherine Ham:

If we lived in a perfect world, it would be Job No. 1 of every single news report on the sequester to give context to the cuts, so Americans know just how huge minuscule they are. Unfortunately, instead of illuminating the numbers, too many reports just regurgitate President Obama’s or Jay Carney’s or Sec. Ray LaHood’s fearmongering. 

I guess then that GOP governors are fearmongering too this week in DC, huh?

Governors of both parties said on Saturday that they knew federal budget cuts were coming, and they pleaded with President Obama and Congress to give them more discretion over the use of federal money so they could minimize the pain for their citizens. 

The governors, arriving here for the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, said that the automatic across-the-board cuts in federal spending that are scheduled to begin at the end of the week were creating havoc, threatening jobs and sapping economic growth in their states. 

They urged the president and Congress to strike a deal that would allow state officials to set priorities and prune spending in a more selective way. They said the cuts would be easier to cope with if they had more freedom to decide how to allocate the savings in education, health care and public safety programs. 

“We are just saying — as you identify the federal cuts and savings — give us flexibility to make the cuts where they will do the least harm to our citizens,” said Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, a Republican and the vice chairwoman of the association. “Don’t balance the federal budget on the backs of state governments.” 

Hmm, and let's remember these are the same states  and governors like Oklahoma's Mary Fallin who are warning of dire consequences of sequestration cuts as part of revenues from the federal government...and at the same time are calling for massive state tax cuts for the rich, and raising them on the poor.

In Oklahoma, Governor Fallin has significantly scaled back her tax cut ambitions from last year.  Rather than aiming for a fundamental restructuring of the income tax, the Governor has proposed simply repealing the state’s top personal income tax bracket, thereby cutting the state’s top rate from 5.25 to 5.0 percent.  The Oklahoma Policy Institute explains that this proposal “would take $106 million from Oklahoma schools, public safety, and other core state services without offering any way to pay for it.”  And ITEP’s new Who Pays? report shows that last time Oklahoma cut its top income tax rate, in 2012, the vast majority of the benefits (PDF) went to the highest-income taxpayers in the state.  Meanwhile, State Senator Anderson has once again proposed a dramatic flattening of the income tax that would actually raise taxes on most of the state’s lower- and moderate income residents.

To recap, Gov. Fallin is upset that cuts will do harm to citizens when the federal taxpayers in other states are funding Oklahoma...but apparently she has no problem when those citizens are the poor, the elderly, or schoolchildren and the taxpayers are poor Oklahomans.  Go figure.

And no wonder she's frightened by sequestration's cuts to discretionary federal spending:  the state's taken federal taxpayers to the cleaners for nearly $50 billion over the last 20 years.  And they just cut taxes on the rich again.

Who are the makers and takers now, folks?

Constant Vigiliance, He Shouted

Don't look now, but swing state Republicans are trying to rig the 2016 electoral college again, this time in Pennsylvania, and this time there may not be anything Democrats can do to stop it.

Gov. Tom Corbett (R-PA) was one of the earliest supporters of rigging the Electoral College, backing a plan to do so as early as 2011. Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi was one of the leading supporters of election-rigging the and late this week, he — along with a dozen other co-sponsors — introduced a new plan to rig the Electoral College votes in his blue state of Pennsylvania. Under this legislation, a large chunk of Pennsylvania’s electoral votes would be awarded to the Republican candidate even though Pennsylvania is a solid blue state that has supported the Democratic candidate for president in every election since 1992.

Oh, it gets worse.

The 13 co-sponsors on Pileggi’s bill amount to exactly half of the 26 votes he needs to pass the bill through the state senate. According to state Rep. Mike Sturla (D-PA), now that Pileggi has introduced his election-rigging plan, Republicans could conceivably ram it through both houses of the state legislature and have it on Corbett’s desk in just four days.

In other words, this could end up law within a week:

 The nominee for the Office of President of the United States who wins the plurality of the Statewide popular vote shall be awarded two presidential electors.

The remaining presidential electors shall be divided among nominees for President of the United States by multiplying the number of remaining presidential electors by the percentage of the Statewide popular vote received by a nominee for President of the United States and rounding up to the nearest whole number, subject to the following:

If the total number of presidential electors allocated to all candidates is greater than the number of available electors, the number of presidential electors allocated to the nominee with the smallest percentage of the Statewide popular vote shall be reduced by one.

In other words, the PA plan is to split the state by popular vote percentage, with the winner getting two additional electoral votes, rather than the state being winner take all.  It neatly rigs the state for Republicans, and turns PA into a permanent battleground state.

Now, if every single state did this, that would be one thing, but it's only purple states where Obama won in 2012 that are thinking about this.  Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan Florida, and Wisconsin could do this without any interference from Dems, too, all but assuring Republicans win in 2016.

Here we go again.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Some half-a-dozen nuclear waste storage tanks are leaking at Hanford Nuclear Reserve in eastern Washington State, according to Gov. Jay Inslee.
• President Obama is formally petitioning the Supreme Court to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional.
• Republicans are signaling tough questions will be ahead for Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew involving his time at Citigroup.
• Citing the country's triple-dip recession, Moody's has stripped the UK of its AAA credit rating and expects continued economic problems.
• Fox is going after Dish Network for its new technology transferring shows to mobile devices, which Fox sees as a breach of contract.

Last Call

You know, a funny thing happened on the way to that Democratic party super-majority in California...

An interesting shift in political strategy and policy negotiations was felt through the Capitol on Friday, with news that a rising star in Democratic circles will immediately resign his seat in the state Senate.

Sen. Michael Rubio, D-Shafter, cited the need to spend time with his family in a statement announcing his resignation.

"My wife and I have been blessed with two beautiful daughters, from whom we have learned a great deal," said Rubio in a written statement.  "Our youngest child, who has special needs, has given me great perspective as to life's priorities and our eldest has reminded me that the most critical decisions are made at home and not under the Capitol dome."

OK, so big deal, right?  Wrong.  So very, very wrong.

There are now three vacancies in the Legislature's upper house, all Democrats who have left their elected posts early (the first two were senators who won seats in Congress last fall).  That means only 26 Democrats, one short of the supermajority. While Democrats are no doubt favorites to ultimately retain enough seats to resume their supermajority status, the temporary drop in power ends talk of any immediate actions on issues ranging from taxes to urgency measures and beyond.

So until special elections can be held to fill at least one of those three seats, a united GOP bloc in the CA State Senate can now stop any major legislation.   They went from powerless to minority veto power for just about anything.  Again.

But here's the real kicker:

His statement says he will accept a government relations job with Chevron.

You know, "government relations".  Lobbyist.  Best what, couple hundred thousand ever?  All spent for six months or so of being able to at least try to block any major environmental, energy, or tax laws?  Seems like a damn good deal to me if you're Chevron.  Well played, Evil Mustache-Twirling Dudes.  Well played.

On The Next Beltway High

Meanwhile at Beltway High, the preppie yearbook clique over at WIN THE MORNING has had quite enough of that snotty Kenyan kid.

President Barack Obama’s greatest adversary in the latest budget battle isn’t the Republican leadership in Congress — it’s his confidence in his own ability to force a win.

"We haaaaaaate him.  We doodle little X's over his eyes on all his pictures, and we're totally not going to buy anything at his commnity organizer bake sale."

He has been so certain of his campaign skills that he didn’t open a line of communication with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell until Thursday, a week before the spending ax hits. And when they did finally hear from Obama, the calls were perfunctory, with no request to step up negotiations or invitations to the White House.

"Totally in our Burn Book, Barry.   You pull this crap before Homecoming, we retaliate."

That’s because Obama’s all-in on an outside strategy, doing just about everything other than holding serious talks with Republicans. In the last two days alone, he’s courted local TV anchors, called in a select group of White House correspondents to talk off the record, chatted up black broadcasters and announced plans to stump next week at Virginia’s Newport News Shipyard. Throughout, he’s talked in tough terms that signal little interest in compromise — or suggestion of backing down.

He’s navigating a thin line. Obama is convinced he’s got the upper hand on Republicans. Yet he can go only so long before he risks being perceived as a main actor in Washington’s dysfunction, threatening a core element of his political brand — and the fragile economic recovery he’s struggled to maintain.

The calls placed Thursday to Boehner and McConnell were prompted, in part, by a White House desire to inoculate Obama from that exact criticism.

"So yeah, try to win NOW mister smart eleventy-dimensional chess nerd.  We own you now.  Round up the guys, we're going to Pinkberry to celebrate."  And high fives were given all around!

And then the President of the United States burned 50 calories from laughing at this article this morning, because it's such a completely transparent attempt to not appear like a group of ungrateful emo high school twits that it pretty much reinforces every awful stereotype about Politico's brand of "journalism" (in the same way that flesh-eating bacteria is a "weight-loss aid".)  Meanwhile, these goofballs continue to believe that Republicans are serious players with a serious plan that didn't come from Doofenshmirtz Evil, Inc.

Haters gonna hate, yo.

Chris Bag O' Veto Override

New Jersey Democrats in the state legislature are planning to try to gather enough GOP votes to override GOP Gov. Chris Christie's veto of the state's law allowing gay marriage.

In early 2012, lawmakers in New Jersey successfully passed marriage equality bill, but Gov. Chris Christie (R) vetoed it, claiming same-sex marriage was not an issue of “gay rights.” The legislature has until January 2014 to attempt to override that veto, and Democratic leaders in both chambers announced this week that they will attempt to do just that.

The bill originally passed the Senate with a 24-16 vote, so only three more votes are needed to reach a two-thirds majority for the override. In the Assembly, however, the bill only passed 42-33, so 12 more votes are needed. Lawmakers will likely wait until after the June elections to hold the vote so that Republicans are more willing to consider a controversial vote. LGBT activists have been lobbying for more support for an override since the bill’s passage last year, primarily because they are opposed to a referendum.

So, after state elections in June, the move will be on to get an override vote before the end of the year.  It's going to take a bipartisan effort to do it, not to mention enough New jersey Republicans interested in butting heads with Christie.  I wish them the best of luck:  after a year now, New York is happily bringing in gay marriage bucks, with NYC alone racking up over a quarter of a billion dollars.  You can bet Jersey legislators of both parties want in on that cash, big time.

I wouldn't be surprised if this happens.

StupidiNews!

• Rapper Kenny Clutch is among the three dead in a bizarre shooting and car crash in the middle of the crowded Las Vegas strip.
• Washington State Democrats want to pass a bill to forgive minor marijuana offenses in light of the state's recent new law to legalize pot.
• The nation's agriculture forecasters see more drought conditions persisting across most of the US in 2013, but not quite as bad as last year.
• The 17-nation Eurozone will see continued recession and higher unemployment this year according to economic officials in Brussels.
• Ontario's Court of Appeals has ruled Toronto police must get a warrant to search Canadian cell phones if they are password-protected.

Last Call

FOX News:  we report, you decide that we're pretty much crazy.  Crazy all the way to the bank, that is.  Also, dear Current TV owners Al Jazeera English:  Welcome to the neighborhood, love, Lisa Daftari.

The point is they want to differentiate themselves from their sister network, but at the same time, it’s the same thing. They’re having the same type of coverage. They’re apparently expanding to eight cities, including Detroit, Michigan. Detroit, Michigan is a large ex-pat community of Muslim-Americans and sleeper cells have been detected. You can Google this, you can find out all this information. So if you’re trying to set yourself apart the Qatari petro-dollars are backing this, you’re still developing in this area where the sleeper cells have been detected. They’re going to have do do much more to prove to me that they’re different from their sister network. 

Paranoid and bigoted much, ma'am?

I mean to be a FOX News contributor, apparently take any statement true to FOX, and replace all the FOX stuff with something liberal.  The reverse seems to hold true:  "So if you're trying to set yourself apart the Exxon petro-dollars backing this, you're still developing in this area where patriot militias and white supremacist groups have been detected."

Any more projection from this one, and she can get a job in your local theater.