Thrown Under The Longships

As Steve M details, Republican NYC councilman Dan Halloran was one of the named co-conspirators in Monday's goofy plot where disaffected Democrat Malcolm Smith was trying to apparently bribe his way onto the NYC mayor's ticket as a Republican.  Halloran, being a FOX News contributor, of course had to be jettisoned from the organization rather permanently, so we see the New York Post with Halloran's secret on the front page today.

Halloran, you may recall, was the guy most responsible for spreading the story -- ultimately debunked -- that union snow-removal workers deliberately engaged in a work slowdown after a Christmas-week blizzard hit New York City in 2010. Halloran has also been a frequent guest on Fox News, opining on everything from Mike Bloomberg's large-soda ban to the Obama administration's Middle East policy.

Now we learn (hat tip: Gawker) that Halloran is a pagan, a member of a polytheistic pre-Christian church whose tenets at one point required him to be flogged.

So we are told by the New York Post (apparently Murdoch's media empire no longer has any use for Halloran).

The religion, Theodism, is definitely of a pagan branch.  Hey folks, I know pagans, they're fine people.  Nothing wrong with that.  What's wrong with it is then pretending to be Christian to attack Islam as a false religion and hanging out with bigots like Pam Geller.

In a video made by "Stop Islamization for America," you can see Halloran seated on a dais near Pamela Geller before speaking at an event called "The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attacks."

... "Let me apologize on behalf of the cowards in politics, who choose to stand up for special interests instead of doing what is right," Halloran begins his speech.

Being right, in this case, involved demonizing all Muslims for 9/11. Halloran then proceeds to align himself with his Irish, Roman Catholic, and cop roots, pandering in the crudest possible way to the audience's fears.

Yeah, this guy's a piece of work, huh.

Debt Dolt Derp Doom

Via Booman, the House GOP response to the specter of sequestration looming over the economy in Friday's depressing jobs reports, and the President's budget offer of again putting chained CPI on the table?

Eric Cantor is promising another brutal debt ceiling battle to force hundreds of billions more in austerity cuts and hurt our credit rating.

On the debt ceiling, Cantor said the House will consider the Full Faith and Credit Act, H.R. 807. This bill, from Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), would require the government to prioritize interest payments on government debt if the debt ceiling is hit. "I expect the House to consider legislation in this area in the near future," he wrote.

The government has the potential to bump up against the ceiling in May. Earlier this year, Congress passed the No Budget, No Pay Act, which suspended the debt ceiling limit through May 18.

On May 19, the debt ceiling will be equal to the level of debt accumulated by that date, which means Congress will be under pressure to act before then to increase the ceiling again.

But House Republicans have already said they would be looking for a deal to cut a dollar of spending for every dollar increase in the debt ceiling. That sets up a fight with Democrats, who will likely push for a clean extension that does not require spending cuts.

So this will put us right back where we were in 2011.  Even worse, Booman is 100% right on what prioritizing our payments will mean to international markets and credit ratings agencies:  we will be forced to default.

Our credit rating is based on the likelihood that we will pay all our bills on time. Even the suggestion that we might "prioritize" our payments is an invitation to downgrade our credit rating. The last time the House Republicans played around with the debt ceiling our credit rating was downgraded even though we never had a late payment. It was downgraded because it was evident that the House Republicans are insane and might "prioritize" our debt payments in the future, which is exactly what is being discussed now. 

 

So yes, House Republicans are planning on destroying our economy through wrecking our sovereign credit rating.  They hope you will blame Obama for it when they do.  

 

That's the Republican plan for "growth".  Punish Americans until we get rid of the Democrats.

Firearms Bills On Borrowed Time

The number of Senate Republicans vowing to block any and all gun safety legislation is now up to an appropriate 13.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s threat to filibuster any new gun restrictions is gathering steam, as a dozen of his Republican colleagues have now signed onto his plan.

The Kentucky Republican and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) first wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid late last month to warn him of their intention to try to tie up the Senate if, as planned, Reid moved forward with legislation that would expand background checks and attempt to crack down on interstate gun trafficking.

There's a very simple reason as to why:  the gun lobby has bought a baker's dozen of senators.

The Gun Owners of America, a small group that has risen in influence because of its strict adherence to a pro-gun line, has pressured senators and the National Rifle Association to back Paul, Cruz and Lee.

“If, you are an NRA member, contact them,” GOA wrote in an action alert sent to its own members, some of whom are also in the NRA, on April 1. “Urge them to join with us in supporting the Paul-Cruz-Lee filibuster. That means they should tell senators to oppose the motion to proceed to any gun control vehicle, and to oppose cloture on the motion to proceed to any gun control vehicle.”

In addition to Paul, Lee, Cruz, Rubio and Moran, the Republican who have signed the second letter are Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho, Dan Coats of Indiana and Pat Roberts of Kansas.

“We will oppose the motion to proceed on any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions,” they write.

So no, even with ridiculous 90%+ of Americans wanting universal background checks, this bill will never pass, and these Senators that will kill it will have a equally ridiculously high chance of re-election in 2014, 2016, and 2018.

That is, unless you plan to vote.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• North Korea is warning that safety of diplomats in Pyongyang is not guaranteed as tensions rise with South Korea as Seoul deployed naval destroyers in defense.
• The parents of slain teenager Trayvon Martin have reached a wrongful death settlement worth $1 million with the homeowners' association of where he was killed.
• Yemen is asking the US to release cleared Gitmo detainees that continue to be held even after the US has determined that they are no longer a threat.
• Continued six-party negotiations with Iran have ended in another stalemate as both sides are "far apart" on nuclear enrichment.
• After success in Kansas City, Google Fiber's next rollout will reportedly be in Austin, Texas as the internet giant continues to test residential and commercial gigabit internet.

Last Call

Why should fast food workers getting 40 hours a week have the dignity of a living wage?  That's crazy talk.

The hosts of Fox & Friends on Friday suggested that fast food workers should stop striking for higher pay and get a second job because the minimum wage “was never meant to be a career wage.”

On Thursday, hundreds of restaurant workers in New York City went on strike to demand a wage of at least $15 an hour. The current median wage of $9 an hour puts workers at about $4,500 lower that the poverty threshold of $23,000 for a family of four. The current minimum wage in New York City is $7.25.

“Here’s the deal, you’re a minimum wage worker, that’s an entry-level salary,” Fox News host Brian Kilmeade opined on Friday. “If you’re good, you’ll get a raise.”

“Minimum wage was never meant to be a career wage. If you work hard you will get higher — you will get more money. Here’s the other thing, as hard as it is in some cases, because you are a single mom or a single dad, you’ve got to get another job. You’ve got to get another job on top of that so you have two incomes.”

“Brian you hit on the nose, I think, the key thing,” co-host Steve Doocy remarked. “If it is a minimum wage job, expect to get paid the minimum wage.”

So, we make it too easy to get welfare to support people because minimum wage jobs were never meant to support people.  I think I found your problem, guys.

I guess Kilmeade and Doocy didn't see the striking fast food workers on last night's All In With Chris Hayes, one of which had worked at Taco Bell for years and had gotten a total career raise of 20 cents an hour as a reward for his hard work.

 


Maybe when he's been there for 30 years, he'll be making $8 a hour.  The American dream, says the guy paid thousands to be a moron on TV every weekday morning.

Over The Counter, From The Bench, In The Face

A federal judge has scrapped the Obama administration's FDA rules on Plan B contraception being available over the counter, ordering it be made available without age restrictions.

Judge Edward R. Korman, in the case of birth control activist Annie Tummino vs. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, ruled in a highly critical 59-page opinion, “This case has proven to be particularly controversial because it involves access to emergency contraception for adolescents who should not be engaging in conduct that necessitates the use of such drugs and because of the scientifically unsupported speculation that the drug could interfere with implantation of fertilized eggs. Nevertheless, the issue in this case involves the interpretation of a general statutory and regulatory scheme relating to the approval of drugs for over-the-counter sale. The standards are the same for aspirin and for contraceptives. While the FDA properly recognizes that cognitive and behavioral differences undermine ‘the ability of adolescents to make reasoned decisions about engaging in sexual intercourse,’ the standard for determining whether contraceptives or any other drug should be available over-the-counter turns solely on the ability of the consumer to understand how to use the particular drug ‘safely and effectively.’”

Judge Korman's opinion is fairly brutal, basically saying that the ruling was entirely political and "without scientific basis".  Which it was, this was one of the calls President Obama got 100% wrong, and I was far from the only one who called him out on it.

He blasted Sebelius’ decision as blatantly political, saying, “even with eyes shut to the motivation for the Secretary’s decision, the reasons she provided are so unpersuasive as to call into question her good faith” and that “she has failed to offer a coherent justification for denying the over-the-counter sale of levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives to the overwhelming majority of women of all ages who may have need for those drugs and who are capable of understanding their correct use.”

The government will mostly likely appeal this ruling, and stupidily, it will go before SCOTUS.  Who knows what they'll do with it, but don't expect Plan B to be available for years, if ever, to those under 18.

President Obama Officially Off The Chain(ed CPI)

The NY Times is reporting that President Obama's budget has a pretty huge concession in it:  recalculating the rate of growth of social safety net benefits through the process of chained CPI.  Jackie Calmes at the Times calls it a "cutback" and she's right.

Besides the tax increases that most Republicans continue to oppose, Mr. Obama’s budget will propose a new inflation formula that would have the effect of reducing cost-of-living payments for Social Security benefits, though with financial protections for low-income and very old beneficiaries, administration officials said. The idea, known as chained C.P.I., has infuriated some Democrats and advocacy groups to Mr. Obama’s left, and they have already mobilized in opposition. 

As Mr. Obama has before, his budget documents will emphasize that he would support the cost-of-living change, as well as other reductions that Republicans have called for in the popular programs for older Americans, only if Republicans agree to additional taxes on the wealthy and infrastructure investments that the president called for in last year’s offer to Mr. Boehner. 

Mr. Obama will propose other spending and tax credit initiatives, including aid for states to make free prekindergarten education available nationwide — a priority outlined in his State of the Union address in February. He will propose to pay for it by raising federal taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products. 

“The president has made clear that he is willing to compromise and do tough things to reduce the deficits, but only in the context of a package like this one that has balance and includes revenues from the wealthiest Americans and that is designed to promote economic growth,” said a senior administration official, who, like others, declined to be identified confirming details about the coming budget. 

“That means,” the official added, “that the things like C.P.I. that Republican leaders have pushed hard for will only be accepted if Congressional Republicans are willing to do more on revenues.” 

It's a moot point in a sense.  Republicans will declare the entire plan DOA anyway, simply because Obama proposed it.  In another sense, it's a major concession as I said before:  retirees will get less money than they would have, meaning this budget is DOA among Dems as well.

So I'm not sure why President Obama is going this route, considering Republicans will reject the entire offer, and Democrats will not support it because of Chained CPI.  At most he'll get a couple dozen votes for it.

That leaves the budget as a negotiation tactic, but again, Republicans have yet to embrace anything that looks like a Grand Bargain.  They wont to annihilate Barack Obama, not negotiate.  

So at this point, either the President is wasting America's time with a budget that will never pass, or wasting his time with a negotiation tactic that will be ignored (and more likely, Republicans will simply say "Obama is the one cutting Medicare, we're protecting it!") and attack him.  

It's east to blame the President's advisers on this for giving lousy advice, but the reality is at this point even I have to admit that after four years of Republicans treating the President as a illegitimate disease who needs to be expunged from American history, if President Obama actually thinks the GOP gives a good goddamn about negotiation, he's crazy.

StupidiNews!

• The death toll in Shanghai from the H7N9 strain of avian flu has risen to 6 as Chinese officials close the city's poultry markets in a containment effort.
• Florida Democrat Bill Nelson becomes the latest senator to endorse same-sex marriage, becoming the 51st Senate lawmaker to publicly do so.
• A new Pew Research poll finds that Americans now back the legalization of marijuana for the first time since Pew started asking the question in 1969.
• Denmark's housing bubble continues as the country considers a stimulus plan designed to protect the country's AAA credit rating.
• Electronic Arts' SimCity woes continue with some gamers upset over an in-game charging station (and advertisement) for the Nissan Leaf.

Last Call: At The Movies

Legendary film critic and movie historian Roger Ebert lost his battle with cancer today, passing at the age of 70.

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

He lost part of his lower jaw in 2006, and with it the ability to speak or eat, a calamity that would have driven other men from the public eye. But Ebert refused to hide, instead forging what became a new chapter in his career, an extraordinary chronicle of his devastating illness that won him a new generation of admirers. “No point in denying it,” he wrote, analyzing his medical struggles with characteristic courage, candor and wit, a view that was never tinged with bitterness or self-pity. 

On Tuesday, Mr. Ebert blogged that he had suffered a recurrence of cancer following a hip fracture suffered in December, and would be taking “a leave of presence.” In the blog essay, marking his 46th anniversary of becoming the Sun-Times film critic, Ebert wrote “I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers hand-picked and greatly admired by me.” 

Always technically savvy — he was an early investor in Google — Ebert let the Internet be his voice. His rogerebert.com had millions of fans, and he received a special achievement award as the 2010 “Person of the Year” from the Webby Awards, which noted that “his online journal has raised the bar for the level of poignancy, thoughtfulness and critique one can achieve on the Web.” His Twitter feeds had 827,000 followers. 

The one word I can use to describe Ebert is this:  honest.  He was honest in his reviews, both scathing and praising, honest with his cancer and his desire to keep going long after other people would have given up, and most of all honest with himself, smoothly passing on his prolific writing duties to a new generation of film historians employed as writers for his website.  He honestly recognized technology as both tool and hindrance for film, and in spreading its virtues across the planet.

Honestly, he will be missed.  More on Ebert from The Grio's Adam Howard, Sci-fi author John Scalzi, and President Obama.

The Nullification Game

Yesterday's story about North Carolina Republicans signing onto a bill that would invoke the Tenth Amendment in order to establish a state religion was never about establishing a state religion, but all about nullification, specifically nullification of the country's first black President, and people concentrating on the theocracy angle are in part missing the bigger threat here.

If the logic that the Tenth Amendment trumps the Supremacy Clause holds true (despite a good 60 years of Supreme Court precedent that the greater good of the nation outweighs a state's right to simply ignore federal laws) then we no longer have a United States of America, but a disunited country.  We've fought wars over this concept, guys.  Some 150 years after states went to war against each other over this, the Republican party is increasingly moving toward this poisonous position once again.

"Washington can't tell us what to do" has become "We won't enforce their laws" in turn becoming "We no longer recognize the laws we don't like" and is going towards "We'll fight like hell to be free of you."  Texas grumbling about secession, North Dakota passing clearly unconstitutional abortion restrictions and daring Washington to do something about it, now we have North Carolina challenging the Bill of Rights and making a huge court fight out of it.

There's no real downside to constantly overloading the courts with these battles, because all it takes is one win to open the door, and then chaos reigns.  There's four votes to have the Tenth Amendment be the predominant tenet of the law, nullifying the federal, on the Supreme Court.  These are the same jokers that came within a whisker of overturning Obamacare completely on these same grounds, and whom believe that corporations are entities with free speech rights that can only be expressed by being able to use unlimited funds to buy our election system.

So no, I don't put nullification past them.  This is all part of the ALEC playbook anyway: relentlessly challenge anything remotely liberal in court until it either becomes unenforceable or is overturned.  So far it's working out rather well for them, only being stopped by a thin margin of occasional capricious wisdom on the part of Justice Kennedy and the ego of Chief Justice Roberts not wanting to go down in legal history as the biggest goat ever.

That ain't much to rest a country on.

[UPDATE]  Looks like the national public outcry was so massive that North Carolina's state House Speaker, Republican Thom Tillis is promising that he will not bring the bill up for a vote:

A House resolution supporting the creation of an official religion in North Carolina will never come to a vote, officials said Thursday.

House Speaker Thom Tillis' office said House Joint Resolution 494 was dead.

So, looks like we won this round.  The next, well...

The Merchant Of Menace

Adidas, you're horrible, horrible people.

Kevin Ware broke his leg during an Elite Eight game on Sunday. Louisville handled it in classic, major college athletic fashion, by exploiting sentiment for profit. “Rise Up # 5″ Final Four t-shirts are already for sale on the team website. Proceeds benefit…the Louisville Athletic Dept and Adidas. Just shameless.

Damn right there is.

StupidiNews!

• Connecticut's state legislature has passed and Gov. Dan Malloy is expected to sign into law today strict new gun safety measures in the wake of the Newtown mass shooting.
• Students at a rural Georgia high school are organizing the school's first racially integrated prom this year after decades of "traditionally" segregated separate proms.
• South Korean automakers Hyundai and Kia are recalling nearly 2 million late model vehicles due to safety concerns with brake lights.
• The notion of Ohio Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown as chair of the Senate Banking Committee has the banking industry up in arms as NY Sen. Chuck Schumer remains silent about his plans for the seat.
• Disney has opted to shutter game developer LucasArts and license out the Star Wars franchise to other game developers.

Last Call

Josh Kraushaar makes the case as to why Mark "Appalachian Trail" Sanford is in real trouble in this special election against Elizabeth Colbert Busch.

Sanford’s personal problems are the biggest reason the seat will be in play. There’s a long list of House seats flipping in the wake of scandal: Anthony Weiner saw his Queens district flip to Republicans in the wake of his sex scandal. One month after winning a Republican primary in March 2006, an indicted Tom DeLay opted not to run for reelection, recognizing there was a good chance he’d lose despite representing one of the most Republican seats in the country. That same year, Rep. Don Sherwood couldn’t overcome the blowback from news that he choked his mistress, coughing up his ruby-red district in northeast Pennsylvania. All those seats were considered safely in one party’s corner, until scandal struck.

Second, special elections are notoriously unpredictable.  Democrats won several seats in the heart of the Deep South in 2008 off-year elections, and Republicans picked up a seat in Hawaii just before the 2010 midterms. Like all special elections, the race will turn on which side can generate more enthusiasm from the base.  Given Sanford’s high unfavorable ratings, it’s very possible a lot of Republicans will choose to stay home, giving Democrats an opportunity to win the turnout battle.

Third, even though the race is taking place in South Carolina, the Charleston-based district favors country-club Republicans over social conservatives. That could play to Sanford’s advantage -- these voters may be more forgiving of his sins -- but it also suggests they’d be more receptive to voting for a moderate Democrat than their more evangelical counterparts in the western part of the state. The district nearly elected an openly gay businesswoman, Linda Ketner, who took 48 percent of the vote in 2008 against then-Republican Rep. Henry Brown.

I honestly think a lot of Country Club Repubs are going to be horrified to be represented by Sanford.  The guy's damaged goods, and if you're playing the influence game, honestly, how much clout is Sanford going to have on the Hill if he wins?  Meanwhile, Colbert Busch is a business-friendly Democrat, and frankly as Kraushaar says, a lot of them will be okay with that on the social stuff anyway.

We'll see, but I stand by my theory that for this race to be a tossup in a blood red district shows just how awful of a candidate Sanford is.

North Carolina's Turn On The Rack, Again

Boy, North Carolina Republicans are really going straight for the insaneotrons, aren’t they.

A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide.

The bill grew out of a federal lawsuit filed last month by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the board has opened 97 percent of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

But FREEDOM and DON’T TREAD ON ME so we’ll ignore the First Amendment part that says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and all that.  But it gets even more awesome, now with LIBERTY:

House Bill 494, filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic:

“The Constitution of the United States does not grant the federal government and does not grant the federal courts the power to determine what is or is not constitutional; therefore, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the power to determine constitutionality and the proper interpretation and proper application of the Constitution is reserved to the states and to the people,” the bill states. “Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.”

The Tenth Amendment argument, also known as “nullification,” has been tried unsuccessfully by states for more than a century to defy everything from the Emancipation Proclamation of the Civil War to President Obama’s health care reforms to gun control.

So yeah, Tenth Amendment nullification, the South’s favorite “I can’t hear you Washington lalalalala” argument since 1828.  At this point we’ve got people actively saying that the Union doesn’t matter, that 150 years of precedent and a war fought over the issue doesn’t matter, and that states can do what they want so screw you.

It doesn’t actually work this way.  Or at least it didn’t before President Thugheart X Reparations came to power in his illegal Kung-Fu and waffles junta.  Now all of a sudden we’re dusting off the Fort Sumter gameplan again.  Sure, let’s keep up that outreach, GOP.

And lest we think this is a nowhere bill written by a couple of dinks from Salisbury who will get politically disappeared, it seems the GOP here is quite serious about passing this, as we see at the end of the article:

Eleven House Republicans have signed on to sponsor the resolution, including Majority Leader Edgar Starnes, R-Caldwell, and Budget Chairman Justin Burr, R-Stanly.

This one could get ugly.

Time To Police Yourselves, Folks

The GOP assault on government services continues, as a Georgia town compels residents to own a gun to protect themselves.  We can't afford cops while we're cutting taxes for the rich and destroying government services, we'll just make you defend your own homes from criminals.

The town of Nelson, Georgia, followed through on its proposal to require residents to own a gun Monday night following a unanimous vote by the city council.

WGCL-TV reported that the law will apply to heads of household, with exceptions built in for the disabled, mentally ill and those objecting to gun ownership for religious reasons. Convicted felons will not be allowed to own a firearm.

“If anything should happen that they would need to use a firearm, [now] they are backed up by their government, their city government,” council member Edith Portillo told the station.

Now, the city council says the ordinance is symbolic and won't be enforced, mainly because Nelson, Georgia has about 1,500 people and city council members outnumber the number of cops.  Or in this case, cop.  Singular.  (He's overworked.)

But the whole point is now, if there's any issues with crime, Nelson City Council can say "Well, did you have a gun in the home?  You didn't?  Guess that's too bad."  How long before this law becomes not "symbolic" but actual law, and in a place much larger than Nelson?

Won't be long in red state America, folks.