Mitch Already Turtling Up

Seems Mitch The Turtle is already shelling out big bucks to attack Ashley Judd in ads, some 20 months before the election and without Judd even throwing her hat in on the Dem primary yet.  Scared much, man?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has bought six figures worth of airtime to back a television ad campaign beginning on Thursday. The buy marks the start of what could be one of the cycle’s most contentious races.

McConnell’s ads, up a year and eight months before his name appears on a general election ballot, will air for a week in the Lexington, Ky., and Louisville, Ky., media markets. The buy is in the “low six figures,” a McConnell aide told CQ Roll Call.

Democrats framed the early ad buy as a sign of weakness.

“Running campaign commercials almost two years before an election is an unprecedented admission of fear for a sitting senator,” Dan Logsdon, the chairman of the state Democratic Party, said in a statement.

Well no foolin'.   Yes, Mitch is scared, because he knows he's vulnerable.  Hell, he might not even survive his own primary at this rate.

In his shell, alone and scared...

StupidiNews!

• The trial of two high school football players accused of raping a girl at a party begins today in Steubenville, Ohio.
• NASA scientists confirm readings from the Curiosity rover that the red planet does contain the necessary elements for supporting life in its past.
• Both Republicans and environmentalists are eager to see what five competing companies can do to bring offshore wind turbine farms to North Carolina's Outer Banks.
• Boeing will sell some 170 of its 737's to European discount carrier RyanAir in a deal valued at over $15 billion.
• Microsoft's latest security patch plugs a hole that could allow malware to completely hijack a PC through a USB flash drive.

Last Call

To recap today:  Republican Paul Ryan pledged to destroy Medicare, completely annihilate Medicaid, all but eliminate public education, federal infrastructure, general public safety, decapitate the New Deal and end the American Dream with his perverse, cruel budget that would crush generations of Americans under austerity and finish transferring basically all the country's wealth to the richest 0.5% or so.

And the Democratic party reaction to that?

Liberal Democrats challenged President Obama on Tuesday over his willingness to cut Social Security benefits.

People still wonder how we lost control of the House.   If you think President Obama is the bad guy in this scenario, resign from reality now and let's get somebody in here who isn't a useless sack of pus.

At a meeting that lasted just less than 90 minutes, Obama was peppered by questions from Sens. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), among others, who challenged Obama on adopting “chained CPI” — a less generous formula for adjusting benefits under Social Security and other programs for inflation.

Obama has said he is open to chained CPI as part of a “grand bargain” that would include spending cuts as well as new revenue. And he didn’t back down from that support during a closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats, despite pushback from Harkin and Sanders.

House Republicans will pass a budget that will obliterate us.  And you stupid clowns are worried about chained CPI?   That's like worrying about if you left your stove on when your city is being nuked from orbit.

Ahh, sweet release...

The Rise Of The Austerians

Paul Ryan's Austerity Budget, 2013 Edition is pretty much the end of the New Deal, a budget that obliterates spending from Medicare, Medicaid, nearly every aspect of the social safety net, education, infrastructure, public safety, and more.  It's nothing less than Paul Ryan telling America's 310 million people "You're on you're own, deal with your own problems."  Ezra Klein rocks the bad news:

Here is Paul Ryan’s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There’s a vague individual tax reform plan that leaves only two tax brackets — 10 percent and 25 percent — and will require either huge, deficit-busting tax cuts or increasing taxes on poor and middle-class households, as well as a vague corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

But the real point of Ryan’s budget is its ambitious reforms, not its savings. It turns Medicare into a voucher program, turns Medicaid, food stamps, and a host of other programs for the poor into block grants managed by the states, shrinks the federal role on priorities like infrastructure and education to a tiny fraction of its current level, and envisions an entirely new tax code that will do much less to encourage home buying and health insurance.

Ryan’s budget is intended to do nothing less than fundamentally transform the relationship between Americans and their government. That, and not deficit reduction, is its real point, as it has been Ryan’s real point throughout his career.

And yes, we'd see catastrophic cuts in Medicaid, 50% by 2023. Tens of millions of people who would have gotten health insurance under Obamacare will go back to being uninsured, and they'll be joined by tens of millions more who would certainly lose their Medicaid health insurance as states simply toss them off the rolls.

Ryan would balance his budget on the backs of tens of millions of the poorest Americans, in order to cut the one percent's tax load to 25%.  It gets worse, his crushing Austerity would last a generation, surpluses that wouldn't go to help the scores of millions of American poor, with no schools, no roads, no cops, no hope of getting out of the hell they're in.  It would all go to pay off the national debt over the next 35 or so years.

It isn't just austerity.  It's soulless cruelty that will simply sacrifice the poorest Americans by the trainload to be fed to the Randian altar.

In short, Paul Ryan is pretty much as evil as it gets.  And he's assuming that the voters who rejected this plan wholesale when it was the Romney platform don't have any say now.

Austerity by the minority.  Awesome.

StupidiNews!

• Former GOP Vice Presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan will unveil the Republican House budget today, expected to be very similar to the platform Romney and Ryan ran on and lost in November.
• A group of House Democrats led by California Rep. Barbara Lee are demanding that the President release the "full legal basis" for use of drone strikes.
• Mexico's three main political parties are leading a legislative effort to break the monopoly of the country's telco industry, under control of the world's richest man, Carlos Slim.
• Residents of the Falkland Islands have voted overwhelmingly to remain a British territory, casting aside Argentina's partial claim to the island chain.
• A "technical glitch" in online currency company Bitcoin caused a 23% drop in company stock price before being corrected.

Last Call

I know that eight years of a Gore-Lieberman presidency from 2000-2008 would have been infinitely preferable to Bush-Cheney or even Kerry-Edwards, but what would have happened in 2008 then?  Would Barack Obama have been in the picture?  Would it have been Clinton, Obama, and Lieberman, or would everyone have stepped aside for him?  Would that have put McCain in the White House, or Romney?  Would we have ended up in Iraq anyway, even if Gore had stopped 9/11?

I ask because of this:

Former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is joining the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank announced Monday.

Lieberman will serve as co-chairman of the American Internationalism Project, alongside former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

"The American Internationalism Project, under the leadership of Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Jon Kyl, is critical to opening a discussion about the challenges facing America in the coming decades — and strategizing about how to meet them," AEI president Arthur C. Brooks said in a statement.

Lieberman, who opted in 2012 not to run for reelection, said there is currently an "urgent need to rebuild bipartisan — indeed non-political — consensus for American diplomatic, economic, and military leadership in the world."

To put this bluntly, the Democratic veep candidate in 2000 is joining the largest conservative think tank in America in 2013.  There would have been problems with Lieberman too, folks.  Yes, they wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as the first four years of Dubya (or, well, the second four years) but down the road we would of had a Republican President now:  McCain, Romney, Lieberman, or some combination.

.
Also, excuse to use the Joe F'ckin Lieberman tag, who now automatically receives Wingnut Stupidity in all future posts.

The Unkindest Kind Of Cuts

It's funny when one of the few remaining actual economists at the WSJ decides to write something factual that bucks the "owned by News Corp" trend, like a sotto voce mumble you can just make out in all the noise of "Obama causes socialism!" and stuff.

7.1%: What the unemployment rate would be without government job cuts.

While most industries have added jobs over the past three years, the recovery has largely bypassed the government sector.

Federal, state and local governments have shed nearly 750,000 jobs since June 2009, according to the Labor Department‘s establishment survey of employers. No other sector comes close to those job losses over the same period. Construction is in second worst place, but its 225,000 cuts are less than a third of the government reductions. To be sure, construction and other sectors performed worse during the depths of the recession, but no area has had a worse recovery.

A separate tally of job losses looks even worse. According to the household survey, which is where the unemployment rate comes from, there are nearly 950,000 fewer people employed by the government than there were when the recovery started in mid-2009. If none of those people were counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would be 7.1%, compared with the 7.7% rate reported on Friday.

Of course, we were told those cuts were absolutely necessary, and that they would be replaced by higher paying private sector jobs.  It's been almost four years.  Where are the magic private jobs?  Well, most of them are at McDonald's I guess.

Here's the stinger at the end, which I assume had to be written for the mouth breathing FOXoids.

Whether you view reducing the size of the public sector as a positive or negative, it clearly means fewer jobs and a higher unemployment rate in the near term.

Which is pretty much what everybody else said, but of course you have to spell it out for them.   Austerity doesn't work, folks.

Land Of The Rising Core Temperature: Two Years Later

It's hard to believe today marks the second anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, but two years after the earthquake and tsunami flooded the plant, refugees are still coping with depression, anxiety, and pretty much full-blown PTSD.  Kenichi Togawa and his family are all too typical, as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel discovers.

At first they lived in a gymnasium in Kawamata town, about 30 miles away. For months, they slept in an open room with many other families and shared shower facilities and eating areas. People cut in line to get food, and others got angry when the kids played too loudly. "We were just like dogs and cats without chains," says Yuka, Kenichi's wife.

That was tough, but their current situation isn't much better. All five family members live in a tiny, temporary house that's roughly 300 square feet. Sixteen-year-old Rina says she often has arguments with her younger siblings, especially when they're settling down to sleep at night. "[The room's] just so small, we hit each other by mistake," she says.

Yuka is grateful to have a roof over her family's head, but she doesn't think of it as a home. "This is temporary," she says. "We leave our house in the morning and we come home and it's temporary. It's like floating in the air." She worries about her children. For now they are healthy, but she fears they may become sick from radiation exposure.

Kenichi is also having a tough time. He is more isolated now than he was before the accident. He spends hours each day playing video games. He has put on weight and drinks more than he used to. Other evacuees are doing worse. Many don't have jobs, and some have taken up drinking and gambling, according to Hiromi Yamamoto, an English teacher from Namie who fled to nearby Iwake City.

Public health officials believe that the stress and isolation the nuclear accident has caused may be more dangerous than the radiation itself. Big disasters are very difficult to recover from, says Ronald Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School who has studied the emotional fallout from Hurricane Katrina. Over the course of years, mental health problems can get worse and worse. "If it's something that goes on for a long, long time as Katrina did, that's where you get into trouble," he says. "The Japanese situation looks like it might be a similar sort of thing."

The Japanese nuclear Katrina.  Cheery, eh?  And yet two years later, the reality is only now sinking in that the refugees from Fukushima will never be allowed to go back home.  I'd be depressed too.  Japan's government has basically failed here, even worse than we did with Katrina.

So who knows at this point what the real legacy of Fukushima will be?

Also, be sure to read over the rest of my Fukushima posts from 2011.  The problems are still there.  They will be there for a very, very long time.

StupidiNews!

• Sweden's Princess Lilian has died at the age of 97, she was the oldest living member of Sweden's royal family.
• Current US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice is being tipped as President Obama's next national security adviser, a post that would not need Senate approval.
• More than 150 years after the USS Monitor sank off the coast of North Carolina, two remaining bodies from the Union ironclad ship were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
• European stocks are down today as ratings agency Fitch knocked another notch off Italy's credit rating.
• Gaming giant Electronic Arts continues to try to fix the company's disaster of a launch of the newest iteration of SimCity.

Local Stupidity, Global Problem

Anyone who has read my articles knows I am very critical of Springfield, Missouri's City Council.  They are ineffective and show no concern for Springfield outside of its ability to lead to kickbacks.  "Community benefits" are usually never seen by the common folk, and when in doubt they form a committee to give them insight on complicated subjects (read: subjects they plan to bury).

This is why I wasn't surprised when they created a fifteen person panel to discuss whether to add gay, lesbian and transgendered to the list of people who cannot be discriminated against.  It made headlines and brought out the cowards and bigots in droves. Those bigots exist everywhere, as does this problem.  Cities everywhere are faced with this problem. Springfield is currently right in the middle of it, but those who come after may find some help in our story.

The first argument was why the LGBT community should not be given special rights.  Of course, the answer to that is the fact that these rights aren't special.  They are the same protections already offered to people saying they cannot be discriminated against based on gender, age, race, religion and ethnic group.  We're all protected already and trying to catch up and see the valid need to extend protection to a group that suffers for no reason.

The second argument was there's no need for it.  Riiiight.  Because we have a history of being fair to minorities without being legally forced.  But okay, I have as good of an imagination as anyone out there, so say there is no reason to add it.  Say there is no discrimination in the Bible Belt towards the LGBT community.  That just means there's no harm in adding it, right?  And if there is a problem then it makes sense to add it, right?  So in either case there is no reason not to add it.

The third argument was that "they" would take our jobs and snatch up opportunities meant for straight holy folk.  If you feel this way, sit down and get the fainting salts ready: THEY ALREADY ARE.  Yup, gay folks have been eating at the same tables, teaching kids, and working alongside holy rollers this whole time.  And if that doesn't make the church ladies clutch their pearls this last little tidbit surely will: they're doing a great job.  They are already here, they are part of our communities, they are our neighbors and our friends.  This legislation won't change that one little bit, nor should it.

"I don't like the idea of sleeping with someone of the same sex, so this is clearly an abomination." And without further ado, we arrive at the meat and potatoes of the problem.  So now that we have cut through the layers of diversion let's address the real problem with how my beloved city views the LGBT community.  I could go on for days (I have, as a matter of fact).  But rather than turn this into a novel, I will simply add a bullet list to make my points.  If I may speak to the homophobes and the judgmental in a short open letter, I think I can finally get this off my chest once and for all:

• Your approval is not required.  Personally, I hate bad tippers.  I'm no fan of athletes and I abhor gossips.  I mean, I hate them so much it makes my toes curl and my right eye twitches with the homicidal need to grab a ball bat and get to work.  But you know what?  When I encounter one of these despots, I roll my eyes and move on because all of these are things that are outside of my control and none of my business.  Nobody said I would adore every person I meet or that I would never be offended by another human being.  The same applies to you.  Get over yourself and move on.
• It's not just sex, you morons.  Most people immediately go to the bedroom when they think of homosexuality. Why  not?  Sexuality is right there, dominating the name.  But there's more to being heterosexual than bumping socially approved uglies, am I right?  The same surely goes for the other side of the coin.  I'd like to say any fool can surely see that, but I'm proven wrong every single day.  These people have jobs, families, hobbies, talents, flaws, triumphs and heartaches.   They are smart, dumb, kind, cruel, lazy and overbearing.  They live and love and cry and laugh.  Just like us.  Because THEY ARE US.  Those people you hate?  The people you think don't deserve equality? They are just like you.  Get over yourself and move on.
• Our government should not bow to beliefs.  For something that changes from person to person, how could anyone expect this to work?  It is not our government's duty to tell us right from wrong, that comes from within us.  Believe what you like, and I mean that wholeheartedly.  However, people's rights to choose is protected for a reason.  "Life, liberty and and the pursuit of happiness" aren't just flowery words.  They are a promise that we can make our own paths and walk them because history shows over and again that oppression doesn't work.  No matter which deity and rich bastard combination you try, it fails every time.  This time isn't any different.  Again, you are not special.  Get over yourself and move on.
• Our government's blessing should never have been necessary in the first place.  It implies that rights for the LGBT community are up for negotiation, and this should never be.  Those rights are the same that any law-abiding person should expect, and to allow people to weigh in on whether gays should be treated equally was never the right way to approach the problem.  The right way to approach it is to see if the answer could be applied to another group in a similar scenario, so bias is removed.  For example: if a large number of people weren't breaking any laws through a variable that leaves them open to exploitation and abuse, should we protect them from discrimination?  It means making the right call without letting the particulars that aren't anyone's business interfere with the result.  

It means getting over yourself, and moving on to things that matter.  Hungry kids.  Domestic violence.  Poverty.  Malnutrition and disease.  Our area is drowning in people who need help making it through the day.  Yet the people who claim to be our moral compass drive past all this to fight the war against a legal distinction that is none of their business.

I think it's time to end this post now.  My right eye is twitching.

Climate Deniers Get A Total Washout

At least one trillion-dollar chunk of the economy is now an absolute believer in climate change:  the insurance industry.  The new reality of superstorms and mega-disasters costing tens, if not hundreds of billions yearly?  That's more than the industry is prepared to handle.

Failure to plan for the effects of climate change might challenge the stability of one of the largest sectors of the world economy, said Mindy Lubber, the president of the sustainability nonprofit organization Ceres, which authored a report that looks at insurers in three states. There were 11 extreme-weather events that each caused at least a billion dollars in losses last year in the United States. Superstorm Sandy alone caused $50 billion in economic losses.

"If climate change undermines the future availability of insurance – something we’re already seeing in places like Florida – it threatens the economy and taxpayers as well," said Lubber, whose nonprofit encourages investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate sustainable business practices.

Regulators in California, New York and Washington state in 2012 required big insurers to disclose their climate-related risks. Ceres looked at those disclosures, which were made before Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast last October.

Ceres found that almost all insurers have significant weaknesses in preparedness. Only 23 companies of the 184 required to make such disclosures have comprehensive climate-change strategies.

Climate change is a significant risk to insurers, warned Mike Kreidler, the Washington state insurance commissioner, who advocates for stronger climate-risk disclosure by insurance companies. There are some standouts, but his concern is that companies will pull out of high-risk markets or raise rates.

What happens to Florida if nobody can get insurance? 

Everyone seems to be waiting on the federal government to fix this, and Republicans who control the House seem pretty eager to say "You're on your own."

Well, unless a disaster hits their district.  Then it's "We're Americans, we pull together."

If things get bad enough, you figure the insurance giants will start demanding climate change legislation, or will Republicans simply let the coasts die?

Considering that's where the liberal elites are, what do you think?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/07/185159/report-finds-insurers-unready.html#storylink=cpy

 

Last Call

President Obama will never be good enough for the "progressives".

This week, amid the hullabaloo over President Barack Obama's Deficit Dinner Diplomacy, and Sen. Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster-cum-dissertation on drone strikes and civil liberties, financial news-watchers touted a milestone in their lives of Market Worship. We speak, of course, of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which on Tuesday hit an "all-time high" of 14,253.77. The good times rolled steady on through the week, and the Dow closed Friday at 14,397.07.

Of course, the notion that these were "record" highs was not, strictly speaking, true. As Jeff Cox as CNBC pointed out, "in inflation-adjusted dollars, the Dow would need to hit 15,731.54 to break the record." Nevertheless, the exciting new ordinal number sitting on the stock market index set off a chorus of hallelujahs. After all, this was the highest mark it had hit since October 2007. (Of course, if we recall correctly, it was about that time that all of our more recent tragic economic events began to occur.)

The fluctuations of the Dow are typically pored over, by the media, in the same way the ancient oracles pieced through the entrails of birds, seeking for whatever path leads to the most prosperity. And in the world of politics, partisans on both sides are quick to point to the Dow as generic confirmation that their policies are working. As long as the story suits their narrative, anyway. 

Authors Jason Linkins and Zach Carter continue on with their open contempt for President Obama, Democrats, the people who voted for them, the people who support them, and the people who seem to think that maybe there's hope.  Suckers!  Rubes!

I do notice there's one word missing from the article:  Bush.   And "GOP" doesn't get a mention until 80% of the way through the article:

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Dow is hitting this peak at a time when everyone in the world knows that the debate over the sequestration -- whose cuts have awesome recession-generating powers! -- has gone into vapor-lock, with the GOP refusing to compromise on raising revenues, through the very tax reform proposals that formed the basis of the party's recent presidential campaign. 

The GOP is far more responsible for the mess we're in, guys.  The functional depression we've been in?  That wasn't President Obama at the helm in 2006-2008.

Try again.

The Vagina Tax

Payday is rolling around. I’m going to look at my paycheck, and review the state and federal withholdings. I’ll grunt at my FICA and insurance costs. I won’t actually see a tax for having a vagina, but it will be there. I feel quite certain my employer practices fair pay, but in way too many cases women are not paid the same as male coworkers for doing the same job. For owning the same responsibilities. For living up to the same expectations.

I suppose some may look at this as a penis bonus instead of a vagina tax. Tomato, tomahto. Yesterday was  International Women’s Day, but before we go global I want to take a look at the United States. Women make seventy-seven cents on the man’s dollar. Not necessarily job for job, but this shows that while the glass ceiling may have cracked it is still firmly in place. Women’s rights are in the hands of politicians and courts, which is ridiculous in itself. Men don’t have to worry about sudden legislature telling them how they can treat their bodies if they were victims of a crime. Men don’t have to fear that they will have to pay more for certain medicines because a church down the road doesn’t approve. If a man is mugged, he isn’t judged for wearing a bright red shirt that clearly attracted the criminal.

If most men woke up in our world, they would take one look around and jump out a goddamn window.

The truly mind-boggling thing is that women aren’t a minority. We are the majority, by a few million. Yet we are consistently throughout history treated as inferior, weaker and less intelligent. Despite centuries of evidence to the contrary, the stereotype persists. Modern women rose to the challenge and proved their ability over and over without realizing it isn’t a matter of proof, it’s a matter of perspective. We can run faster, jump higher and work harder and if we’re really good little girls we might get a chance to break even. Until the parameters change, we can’t win.

Remember when I said I was going to get to the global perspective? Here it is: compared to the rest of the world, we have it relatively good here.

Happy International Women’s Day. Maybe by the next one there will be better things to report.

Cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles.

Freedom To Hate, Freedom To Discriminate, In The Bluegrass State

It was only a matter of time before Kentucky's legislation did something catastrophically moronic that will affect me personally.

“The Religious Freedom Act,” a bill created in response to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control coverage mandate, cleared Kentucky’s Senate Thursday night despite activists’ warning that it could topple years of civil rights progress in the state and “make discrimination legal.”

“[The] legislation could be used by an individual or entity under the guise of a ‘sincerely held religious belief’ to violate the constitutional and civil rights of other persons or organizations,” the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights warned on Tuesday. “In other words, it could make discrimination legal if the discrimination perpetrated is claimed to be due to ‘a sincerely held religious belief.’”

Despite the potential for abuse, state senators advanced House Bill 279 Thursday night by a vote of 29-6, leaving its fate in the hands of Gov. Steve Beshear (D).

Here's the fun part:  it's not just birth control you can object to.  It's basically anything.

If it does become law, Kentucky’s “Religious Freedom Act” could enable discrimination against more than just women seeking birth control. Civil rights advocates worry that landlords and employers could also use the law to justify discriminating against LGBT people and minorities as well, all in the name of “religious freedom.”

Or women.  Or other religions.  Or people who are overweight.  Or people who are short.  Or people who have kids.  How can you prove that the fact you hate LGBT people isn't a deeply held religious belief?  For a non-trivial number of Kentuckians, that's what they say they absolutely believe in.  I'm really hoping Dinosaur Steve can send this law packing, but given the massive vote totals in favor of the bill (82-7 in the state House, and 29-6 in the state Senate), a veto override is pretty much assured.

That leaves a court challenge to the bill.  I'm hoping we get it sooner rather than later, because the law is pretty much in direct violation of several Supreme Court rulings on religious freedom.

Then again, considering the Roberts court is siding with churches these days, a broad ruling in the Obamacare contraception coverage cases brought by religious organizations could indeed make Kentucky's law perfectly legal.  All it would take is five votes.  It would get four, easily.

A big clue could be the SCOTUS ruling on DOMA.  If the court decides that states do have the right to make their own decisions on discrimination, all bets are off.

We'll see.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Another city-block sized asteroid will pass within about 650,000 miles of the Earth on Saturday, discovered just last weekend.
• Czech Republic officials are baffled as to the source of a number of high-profile cyberattacks swamping official Czech government websites this week.
• Catholic cardinals will convene a papal conclave to select the next leader of the church beginning on Tuesday.
• The US jobless rate dropped to 7.7% as 236,000 more jobs were added in February, but January's figures were revised downward.
• The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a major decision on Friday that says the government must have "reasonable suspicion" to search a computer or laptop at the US border.