Last Call: Not With A Bang...

And while we were all eyes on Boston, Republicans are about to kill the gun violence bill.

The tough gun-control bill that President Barack Obama wants now has little, if any, chance of passing this Congress – it’s struggling in the Senate and facing outright rejection in the House.

Vice President Joe Biden worked the phones Monday to try to salvage a bipartisan bill in the Senate but has come up short. Personal appeals from parents of Newtown victims and former Rep. Gabby Giffords haven’t worked either.

And even if Senate negotiators get to 60 votes, the House is certain to rewrite the bill – or discard it altogether.

At this point the votes aren't there. The reason why the votes aren't there is mainly Republicans, but red state Democrats too.

Reid is likely to lose three of his 55 Senate Democrats — Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana. All three said on Monday that they were still reviewing the proposal and would not commit to backing it.

Other members of Obama’s party still undecided include freshmen Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who is up for reelection in 2014, has also not said whether she would back the bill.

That would mean that the bill would fall far short of the filibuster total.   Yes, Democrats are chickening out at this point, but let's not forget it's Republicans who are choosing to block the bill, as Greg Sargent points out.

Because right now, the current situation really appears to be that the fate of the proposal rests in the hands of red state Dems. It would be one thing if it were earning enough GOP support to pass without most of them; in that case, Harry Reid might tacitly indicate that he were okay with a No vote. But right now, the only Republicans supporting the bill are Toomey, John McCain, Susan Collins, and Mark Kirk. The only two Republicans who still appear gettable are Dean Heller and Kelly Ayotte. Even with a total of six Republicans, you’d still need virtually all the red state Dems to break the GOP filibuster.

Keep that in mind as we continue.  Republicans are the ones killing this bill, as I've been saying for months, and they believe there will be no price to pay.

Finding Out The Hard Way About Rand Paul

Yesterday morning the excellent Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote at The Atlantic's website about giving Sen. Rand Paul at least some credit for speaking at Howard University last week and summed up Paul's performance as thus (emphasis mine:)

At this moment, the GOP has a choice. It can embrace the "Gifts" logic of Mitt Romney which holds that black people will never vote for a Republican, or it can make a pitch and compete.

Rand Paul -- skeptical of foreign war, skeptical of the drug war, skeptical of mass incarceration -- is the most credible Republican to make that pitch. We don't have any expectations for Steve King. Paul is different, and is being judged accordingly. You don't get to do something striking and courageous (like Paul's actual filibuster) and get judged by the standards of cowards.

As a black liberal who lives in Kentucky and is one of Paul's constituents, I most respectfully and vehemently disagree. Rand Paul has a long and odious trail through the Bluegrass State, and time and time again his idea of to whom and what liberties should apply always seems to turn out to be the category of people that includes Rand Paul, usually at zero-sum expense of those who are not. I do not find him credible in the least, as Ta-Nehisi points out, Rand Paul is a liar.

Paul's answer to the Civil Rights Act question was deeply damaging. Nothing he did there hurt him more than outright lying. This is 2013. All these kids need do is google Rand Paul and Civil Rights Act to see what Paul actually said. It would be like Obama announcing his support for marriage equality, by claiming he'd always supported it. The worst part is he didn't even have to lie. A simple "I've learned a few things since becoming a senator" would have sufficed. Unforced error. Again, no one around Paul to say, "It's Howard. A third of SNCC went here. You are going to get this question. You must have a good answer."

Now keep in mind, this was just a few paragraphs above where Coates is calling Paul "striking and courageous". This is something I just do not understand. Even when Rand Paul does something I agree with, like co-sponsoring the Justice Safety Valve Act to reduce the awful practice of mandatory sentencing and give judges more leeway, I find I want something like that to succeed in spite of Rand Paul precisely because he has no credibility due to his staggering hypocrisy over liberties and who they should apply to and his outright lies when called out on trying to reconcile his record.

To Coates's eternal credit, it only took him a few hours to revise his opinion of Sen. Paul in a post yesterday afternoon as he researched Paul's post-Howard comments on Friday.

Rand Paul went to Howard University, lied, and then got his ass kicked. That's not so bad. I got my ass kicked regularly at Howard. That was the reason my parents sent me there. But having gotten his ass kicked, his answer is to not to reflect but to make an allegation of racial discrimination.

One of the things I try to do in my work is -- in general -- take people at their word. It's very hard to communicate about anything without good faith. This, of course, assumes that communication is the goal. That was my assumption about Rand Paul. I was clearly wrong.

To those of us who have been continuously embarrassed by Rand Paul's representation of us in the Senate, to whom being his constituent is not an academic exercise in the political calculus of 2016 but unfortunate political reality in 2013, to those of us who have followed his virulent rise to the respectability of only being 95% as insane, bigoted, disingenuous and vitriolic as the rest of the "serious" GOP folks heading into the next election, Rand Paul's credibility evaporated long ago.

I refuse to give him credit because, as Coates discovered the hard way yesterday, everything Rand Paul does is a cynical calculation to help Rand Paul by trying to pull support from liberals who are willing to give him praise just for showing up to the debate. As someone who voted against him, my criteria and my expectations are much higher, and Rand Paul has failed those expectations every. Single. Time. Period. The siren call of his faux libertarian nonsense is a thin veneer hiding the arch-conservative inside. It didn't take Coates long to find out the truth of Rand Paul with just cursory research. It should have been apparent long before, which is the most agonizing thing about Rand Paul and his hustle. I understand keenly the need to fix the school-to-prison pipeline. I understand what decades of disproportionate injustice has done to folks who look like me. I understand the need to find just one sliver of hope in someone like Rand Paul who appears to want to do something about it when so many ignore the absolute atrocity of mass incarceration.

Unfortunately he's just another Republican bigot, my junior senator. Therein lies the problem with the Republican party and its utter lack of credibility to people like me, so yes, as a black liberal in Kentucky I set the bar of expectations to be very high and will continue to do so. Anything less is a disservice. So the next time Rand Paul decides to play his game, please remember what the eventual outcome always is with him, yes?

Unhappy Little Trees, Or Let's Paint The Clown Red

Meanwhile, President Frat Boy likes to paint things.

Former President George W. Bush has opened up about his recent foray into painting, telling the Dallas Morning News in an interview published over the weekend that he likes to shake up stereotypes.

“People are surprised,” Bush told the paper. “Of course, some people are surprised I can even read.”

The dead folks in Iraq and Afghanistan and here, yes, here due to crushing poverty...well, they're not doing much reading these days either.  Let's all have a laugh.

Asked why a semi-retired 66-year-old is spending his free time on frustrating and potentially humiliating activities like mountain biking, painting and golf, Bush laughed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “You’ll have to call all the people who’ve written these books about me, who claim they know me, the psycho-babblers.”

Kinda glad he's no longer in charge with this Boston thing.  We'd be in another decade long shooting war within three months.

StupidiNews!

• Three are dead and over one hundred injured as a pair of explosions along the finish line of the Boston Marathon are believed to have been a deliberate attack.
• In an interview with NBC, Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal says he has "no problem" with creationism being taught in the state's public schools.
• Secretary of State John Kerry says that the US will consider the possibility of direct talks with North Korea if they end their nuclear program.
• Gold plunged over 9% on Monday, the largest single-day drop since 1983 for the precious metal.
• Microsoft is joining Google, Apple, and Samsung in the quest to bring the smart wristwatch to the masses.

Last Call

I've been thinking about the horrific Kermit Gosnell case in Pennsylvania for the last several days, having now gone to trial.  Dr. Gosnell is being charged with basically running the equivalent of an unsanctioned abortion clinic, a last chance step above the back-alley hell women have gone through over the decades.  Dr. Gosnell's medical horror show is awful and disgusting, and as Salon's Irin Carmon points out, progressive feminist bloggers and columnists have been covering the case for some time now, but have largely been ignored.

Now though the case has exploded all over the conservative noise machine, with hollow cries that the case has been deliberately spiked by the "liberal media".  The upshot is that if only the world knew the "truth" about Dr. Gosnell, there would be a huge, crushing backlash that would end abortion forever in America.  The real "truth" is of course limiting abortions so that only the privileged and wealthy few can get them (or in the case of states like North Dakota, attempting to outlaw it completely) is exactly what created the Gosnell monster in the first place, and conservatives know it.

So-called TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws are designed to put such onerous regulatory burden on abortion providers that they cannot remain open, regulating everything from parking lot sizes to demanding larger hallways, requiring multiple hospital admission rights for all providers at the clinic, requiring invasive vaginal ultrasound procedures, requiring clinics meet the same standards as surgical clinics, and more.

The entire Gosnell paradigm is working as intended.  States have been trying to shut down abortion clinics at the state level, limiting access for a great many women.  In 2009 that was up 87% of counties.  It's 90% or higher now.  Making abortion impossible to get, impossible to provide, has always been the goal for the anti-choice faction.  The entire point is to create more Gosnells and use them as empirical evidence that abortion needs to be outlawed by equating anyone who supports a woman's right to choose as being no different from Gosnell himself.

Already, Republicans are taking advantage of the manufactured outrage to plan to push for more regulations and restrictions if not outright federal implementation of more TRAP laws.  More Gosnells lead to more outrage, leading to more regulations, leading to more Gosnells.  That's the real story here, not the fake cover-up narrative.

Moving On Up (Again)

Just a short note for readers:  Imani, Bon, myself, and the rest of the Angry Black Lady Chronicles contributor crew will be moving over to join Elon James White and the fabulous cultural juggernaut that is This Week In Blackness starting today.  I'm pretty damn excited to go along for the ride on this as the crew's KY/OH/IN tri-state correspondent, which is just a fancy name for doing what I do now: calling out the GOP in my area as I have been doing for Imani for three years now.

Hopefully this means a wider audience for our work, and you may even occasionally hear me as a guest over at a TWiB podcast or two.  Maybe.  No promises:  TWiB podcasts are a hell of an act to follow.

Also joining ABLC as part of the TWiB empire of awesome is Jack and Jill Politics, one of the most thoughtful political blogs out there (black or otherwise.)  Be sure to say hello to Baratunde Thurston and Cheryl Contee, two of the best writers I've had the pleasure of reading.

One will need to step us his hat game to hang with these cats, for sure.

The Inside Job On The Jobless Continues

Just a friendly reminder from The Atlantic's Matt O'Brien that the number one threat to America right now is long-term unemployment becoming structural because Republicans keep blocking every single effort to put Americans back to work.

There are two labor markets nowadays. There's the market for people who have been out of work for less than six months, and the market for people who have been out of work longer. The former is working pretty normally, and the latter is horribly dysfunctional. That was the conclusion of recent research I highlighted a few months ago by Rand Ghayad, a visiting scholar at the Boston Fed, and William Dickens, a professor of economics at Northeastern University, that looked at Beveridge curves for different ages, industries, and education levels to see who the recovery is leaving behind.

Okay, so what is a Beveridge curve? Well, it just shows the relationship between job openings and unemployment. There should be a pretty stable relationship between the two, assuming the labor market isn't broken. The more openings there are, the less unemployment there should be. If that isn't true, if the Beveridge curve "shifts up" as more openings don't translate into less unemployment, then it might be a sign of "structural" unemployment. That is, the unemployed just might not have the right skills. Now, what Ghayad and Dickens found is that the Beveridge curves look normal across all ages, industries, and education levels, as long as you haven't been out of work for more than six months. But the curves shift up for everybody if you've been unemployed longer than six months. In other words, it doesn't matter whether you're young or old, a blue-collar or white-collar worker, or a high school or college grad; all that matters is how long you've been out of work.

And these are the folks falling off the labor participation rate at the rate of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands per month.  What's horrible is that both sides recognize the problem, but that only one side wants to do anything about it, and the other side is blocking all efforts.

President Obama proposes large-scale infrastructure projects which will put Americans to work, and proposes large-scale job training efforts to get Americans the skills they need to fill the new jobs.   Republicans blocked them both.  Instead, they figure if they can cut taxes and then cut government spending on jobs programs, jobs will magically be created.

Republicans are keeping Americans unemployed on purpose. They hope you'll blame Obama and either stay home or vote GOP as a result.

Please let that sink in.

StupidiNews!

• Hugo Chavez's political heir, Victor Maduro, has apparently won a narrow victory in yesterday's presidential elections, beating Henrique Capriles Radonski 50.7%-49.1%.
• North Korea is celebrating the national holiday marking the birthday of the country's founder, Kim Il-Sung, the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un.
• The immigration bill before Congress would boost legal immigration into the US by nearly 50%.
• The future of Europe's carbon cap and trade plan could be at the mercy of economic reality in a EU parliamentary decision expected this week.
• The US Supreme Court will today hear oral arguments on ending the 30-year practice of patenting human genes.

Last Call

Class is in session as Melissa Harris-Perry rings up Sen. Rand Paul's visit to Howard University this week as what it was:  a self-serving stunt where Paul thought he would get a pass for just showing up.

After Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act–which were passed by the Democrats in Congress–and after those acts established the framework for black citizens to exercise the franchise and enjoy equal protection. After those Democratic actions, it was white Dixiecrats who left the party and found refuge among Republicans. Those who refused to support civil rights gains were clear that the best party for them in the modern era was the Republican Party.

So folks like Strom Thurmond and large majorities of white voters in Southern states became reliable Republican voters. Because they opposed civil rights. And Sen. Paul, you know a little about opposition to the Civil Rights Act, don’t you?

Even though you told a [Howard] questioner, “I’ve never been against the Civil Rights Act, ever,” Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer correctly reminded us that in 2010, during an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal, you said that even though you “abhor racism”, you do not support bans on discrimination by privately-owned businesses. And that, Sen. Paul, would mean those students from another historically black college, North Carolina A&T, would have just had to live with the private decision to deny them a place to sit at that Woolworth’s lunch counter. Maybe Republicans like you don’t count that as opposition to the Civil Rights Act, but I bet many Howard students do.

And as you said: “Yes. Alright. Alright. You know more than I know… And I don’t mean that to be insulting. I don’t know what you know… you know, I mean I’m trying to find out what the connection is.”

The connection is that Sen. Paul continues to embarrass myself and Kentuckians everywhere with the notion that students from one of the most prestigious historically black institutions of higher learning in the country wouldn't be able to completely see through his transparent nonsense, and challenge him on it in public.

You got called out, Rand:  by myself, by authors and pundits, by commentators and historians, and by the students present at the speech.   Paul came to Howard and gave his usual glibertarian spiel about how government is awful and destroying African-Americans and other minorities, all while distorting your own record. 

Your problem Rand is that you believe the federal government has a place in enforcing the patriarchy and privilege you enjoy so much by telling others that don't have those advantages that it's not fair that the government has its thumb on the scale trying to rectify the situation, which is an argument decades old and just as self-serving and mealy-mouthed now as it was then.

I don't buy it.  The students at Howard U didn't buy it.  Nobody really should.  And if your road to greater political office is going to go over the backs of women and minorities as you lecture how white men are the real victims in this country and that the rest of us should feel shamed into supporting you because "the antidote to racism is worse than the cure" while you're running a very real race hustle yourself?  I don't want any part of it.

Please remove yourself from the political spotlight.  You're giving the Bluegrass State and constituents like myself a bad name.

Ashley, Alison And The Turtle, Part 8

And the Progress KY story keeps getting worse.  Yesterday I pointed out how completely suspect Jacob Conway's word is.  He's the Dem party official who ratted out Progress KY as the folks behind the recording sent to Mother Jones.  Wouldn't you know it, he's now all but recanted a major part of his story...

Kentucky Democratic official Jacob Conway appears to be changing his story. After initially claiming that two members of the liberal group Progress Kentucky bragged to him about recording a private meeting of Mitch McConnell campaign aides, he has now said it's possible he spoke to only one of the activists about the tape.

The Courier-Journal reported Saturday:

In an interview with The Courier-Journal, Jacob Conway, a member of the Jefferson County Democratic Executive Committee, said he is certain he talked with Curtis Morrison about the recording — but he may not have spoken with Shawn Reilly as he told members of the media Thursday.

“I had a lot of conversations with both of them during that time period, and maybe I was just confused, and maybe Shawn never said anything,” he said.

Reilly's attorney had already refuted Conway's version of events. In a press conference posted by the Courier-Journal, Reilly's lawyer, Ted Shouse, said his client is innocent of criminal behavior and is "at most a witness to potential criminal activity."

Conway told the paper that he reached out to Shouse to say his recollection of the events may be incorrect.

This just keeps getting more and more insane, across the board.  Nobody involved in this fiasco is on the level, and the deeper this rabbit hole goes, the more I'm thinking this is a massive con job to assure the vulnerable McConnell another six years.

And so far it's working massively well for Mitch.

The Big Gun Down

I still think that gun legislation won't clear the GOP House, but there are now Republicans senators openly supporting it in the upper chamber (especially now that the bill has been stripped of 90% of its teeth or so), starting with The Lady From Maine, Susan Collins.

Speaking exclusively to NBC News, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is the first GOP senator to say publicly she will vote for the bipartisan compromise on expanded background checks for the sale of guns online and at gun shows.

Collins said "I do intend to support it" now that she has reviewed the actual text of the Manchin-Toomey bill and calls it a "reasonable" approach. Collins described the Manchin-Toomey effort as "a responsible break through from two people who have far better NRA rankings than I have." Both Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia and Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, hold "A" ratings from the National Rifle Association. Collins added she knows her yes vote and support is "not a popular thing in my state."

Again, the private sale loophole is definitely far short of universal background checks, and the federal enforcement increases of existing laws are all in another bill.  So the bill that started out with universal background checks, magazine size limits, limits on the sale of military-style weapons and increased enforcement has become some background check expansion on commercial sales only, and if Collins is backing it, there's a very good chance it'll make it out of the Senate.

That's it.

And it took 19 years for that.  It's an accomplishment, but it comes with the baggage.  And again, I put the odds of this making it out of the House at near single digits.  I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see enough Republicans -- and Democrats -- risking their NRA ratings for this.

Operation Reciprocity

Debate may have begun on the Senate's firearm regulatory bill, but the GOP still has plenty of ways to kill the bill.  The next challenge:  poison pill amendments like concealed carry reciprocity.

“Concealed carry reciprocity” would require all states to recognize out-of-state permits for concealed handguns, essentially eliminating tough state gun standards and establishing a low federal floor of regulation. State laws that deny permits to people who have been convicted of certain violent misdemeanors or require gun safety training could be ignored, as states with tighter gun regulations would have to accept permit holders from states with looser standards — even if those permit holders would have been prevented from carrying guns in the state where they are traveling. 

Federal law only prohibits felons and a few other categories of people from possessing guns, leading many states to enact more restrictions. “If Wyoming has a concealed carry law, somebody could come from Wyoming to the big cities of New York or New Haven or Bridgeport and carry a concealed weapon, which is so against our way of life and the needs here in New York,” Schumer warned earlier this week. 

Gun safety advocates also argue that the provision undermines the GOP’s commitment to state sovereignty by stripping states “of their ability to decide who can — and more importantly, who can’t — legally carry a hidden, loaded gun inside their borders.” The NRA contends that “Congress should recognize that the right to self-defense does not end at state lines” and allow “an individual who has met the requirements for a carry permit” in one state, to carry the weapon in all states. State laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would still “apply within each state’s borders,” the group says. 

But in a letter to Congress during the 2009 debate on a concealed carry reciprocity amendment offered by Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Mayors Against Illegal Guns warned that the effort could empower illegal gun traffickers by allowing them to purchase guns in one state and then drive them across state lines with impunity — so long as they hold an out-of-state permit. Law enforcement would be required to honor concealed carry permits from all 50 states but without properly verifying their authenticity. A letter from the Major Chiefs Association to Congress in 2009 expressed concern that the measure could endanger law enforcement and public safety.

Not to mention the fact that this would mean Democrats would be the one "killing" the bill.  There's a lot left to go for the bill, and so many ways for it to die...

Ashley, Alison, And The Turtle, Part 7

The Progress Kentucky implosion story continues to be completely awesome, and by "completely awesome" I mean the more information I find out, the more it looks like this couldn't have been a better operation to assure McConnell's re-election than if McConnell was behind all of it.  Today we've got more goodies from Page One Kentucky on the state Democratic party official who gave up Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison:  meet Jacob Conway.

Something tells me you’ll want to read this backgrounder on Jacob Conway, the guy who fingered Progress Kentucky SuperPAC folks Shawn Reilly and Curtis Morrison for responsibility of recording Mitch McConnell’s secret strategy session (Part 1 & Part 2). It’s only fitting that Conway’s history get a quick examination.

It’s a disjointed tale involving bench warrants, an Attorney General appointing a Special Prosecutor and claims of mental illness from Conway’s own attorney. Along with a little something involving a prominent gay Republican leader in Washington, D.C. and a well-known Republican-turned-Democrat in Frankfort.

It get weird, and involves a side job with the Log Cabin Republicans (Jacob wasn't always a Democrat, you see), a fake political claim of being a teacher,  $3,000 turning up mysteriously missing from a safe, and Conway's own attorney basically agreeing that the guy is nuts.  Read the whole thing.



Did I mention Conway (left) and Reilly (white tux) know each other pretty well?   No?

This entire story is starting to smell like month-old halibut, folks.  There's a lot more to this than just a recording of a meeting passed to David Corn.  The why, the how, the players, all of it?  This is a symphony of crazy, and we've just gotten to the opening stanzas.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Legendary comedian and actor Jonathan Winters has died at the age of 87.
• Two Georgia Department of Agriculture officials have resigned after reports surfaced about a "drunken fraternity party" atmosphere at a state-owned resort.
• The Obamas and Bidens have released their 2012 tax returns, with the President and first Lady having an effective tax rate of 18.4%.
• Tens of millions in endorsements could be waiting for the first openly gay pro team sports superstar to come out publicly.
• A massive coordinated cyberattack on Wordpress blog sites could be an attempt to build the largest botnet in existence.

Last Call

Same Republican anti-minority, anti-immigrant crap, different state.

Four North Carolina House Republicans filed a bill on Wednesday that notably introduces the “show me your papers” provision of Arizona’s anti-immigration law. Under the bill, H.B. 786, police can check the immigration status of anyone they stop or arrest and detain them for “reasonable suspicion.” The bill also makes it easier for police to seize immigrants’ vehicles. Furthermore, it would require a detained undocumented immigrant to pay the costs of his or her arrest, while making bail more difficult.

The bill does provide driver’s permits to undocumented immigrants if they lived in the state for one year. However, these licenses follow the controversial design North Carolina attempted to issue to DREAMers, which mark them from the rest of the state’s population: Undocumented immigrants would receive a vertical license, instead of the standard horizontal one, and they would carry a thumbprint.

Yeah.  Round up time, yeehaa.   If you're wondering when North Carolina became insane, it was the second the GOP got control of the legislature and the Governor's mansion, so welcome to having a bunch of regressive bigots run your state like the rest of racist assholes in the South, guys.

Increasingly glad I left, when Kentucky is more progressive...