Last Call For Ezra Klein's Credibility

I like Ezra Klein.  He's intelligent, he brings facts and debate to his discussions, and he's good at picking out the wheat from the chaff, unlike most pundits.

But he has one massive blind spot in that regard, and just like his friend Chris Hayes (who Klein covered for this week on All In) that blind spot is anything to do with the Dudebro Defector.  Klein on President Obama's press conference Friday:

Obama began the news conference by announcing a series of reforms meant to increase the transparency of, and the constraints on, the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. They included reforms to Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which enables the collection of telephone metadata; changes to the powerful surveillance courts to ensure ”that the government’s position is challenged by an adversary”; declassification of key NSA documents; and the formation of “a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.”

“What makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation,” Obama said. “It’s the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process.”

OK, now, since this is what everyone has been asking the President to do, you would think that would be at least a point in his favor.  But what immediately follows is some very familiar goalpost-moving behavior we expect to see from the hard right:

If that’s so, then Edward Snowden should be hailed as a hero. There’s simply no doubt that his leaks led to more open debate and more democratic process than would’ve existed otherwise.

Obama reluctantly admitted as much. “There’s no doubt that Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than would have been the case if I had simply appointed this review board,” he said, though he also argued that absent Snowden, “we would have gotten to the same place, and we would have done so without putting at risk our national security and some very vital ways that we are able to get intelligence that we need to secure the country.”

As Tim Lee writes, this is dubious at best. Prior to Snowden’s remarks, there was little public debate — in part because the federal government was preventing it.

So, zero credit for Obama, the guy who defected to Russia (a country that just passed laws making it illegal to have an opinion supporting LGBTQ people) with tons of juicy NSA info on methods and means is a hero, and Klein, who is a journalist and print and TV media figure, is complaining about the stifling of debate.  Awesome.

I always enjoy pundits talking about the stifling of debate, as if pundits talking about things wasn't debate, and that President Obama had a gun to their heads.  It's disingenuous enough when right-wing hacks do it, but Ezra Klein knows better, and he's gone right off the cliff.  I didn't think I'd be putting him in the Village Stupidity category anytime soon, but if he really was going to have a serious debate about the US, Russia, and the NSA, this is nowhere close.

The Death Of Immigration Reform Isn't So Simple

I've given Greg Sargent grief before on his premise that the GOP's relationship with immigration reform is somehow more complicated than demographics, racism, and Obama Derangement Syndrome, but Sargent attempted a defense of his case on Thursday morning.

The chances that comprehensive immigration reform will ever pass the House  are very slim. However, the easy conventional wisdom about what’s happening now — which holds that the conservative base controls the outcome completely, that the death of reform is preordained, and that House Republicans are only looking for a way to kill reform blamelessly — is overly simplistic and is increasingly looking like it’s just wrong.

To understand what’s really happening, the key question to ask is: Are House Republicans just playing for time, or are they actually grappling with the issue of immigration reform and what to do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants?

My answer to that question is the former.  Time and again, Republicans have shown that they aren't interested in governance, merely bomb-throwing rhetoric and obstruction.  If they can't completely control every aspect of legislation, they'll exact whatever price they can and burn the rest down.  It's been this way since 2006, and it will continue.  So what's Greg's theory that this time is different?

In a story that deserves a bit of play today, the Daily Pilot reports that California Rep. Kevin McCarthy — who as the GOP whip is a member of the House leadership team — addressed immigration reform in a meeting of constituents. In some ways, what he said wasn’t surprising: He repeated that the borders must be secure first, and stopped short of supporting citizenship.

But McCarthy came out for legal status, crucially putting it this way: “What you then have to address is the 11 million that are here considered illegal.” This comes after GOP Reps. Aaron Schock and Daniel Webster also embraced varying but significant levels of reform earlier this month.

OK, I can see why a California Republican would see immigration reform in particular as important.  But that means McCarthy is the exception to the rule.  Remember, we have multiple Republicans who have openly said that if the leadership brings the Senate bill up for a vote, Orange Julius will be replaced.

ABC News gets it right today: “Republicans may be changing minds on reform.” Is this all a big ruse designed to make Republicans look serious about the issue before killing reform outright? Maybe. But maybe not. As Simon Rosenberg suggests, we should treat all of this seriously, acknowledging Republicans have been entrenched in an anti-amnesty position for years and that it is at least possible that House Republicans (perhaps for purely political reasons, but that would be movement nonetheless) will grapple with how to move from there to support for reform.

Those who glibly say reform is definitely dead no matter what will read the above as optimism. It isn’t optimism at all: far and away the most likely outcome remains that reform will die. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t describe what’s happening now accurately. And the conventional wisdom has it wrong.

OK, so granted, there's a slim chance it'll pass instead of no chance.  That is significant from a journalism and political viewpoint, yes.  From a practical viewpoint, no.

But Sargent is correct on the technical issues.  Not that it's going to help.  For instance, if this claim by Dem Luis Gutierrez is true, then there's a direct danger to allowing the Senate bill to come up in the House:  it would pass easily.

Forty to 50 House Republicans will support immigration reform, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) predicted Thursday.

Gutierrez said many of the Republicans supportive of immigration reform don’t want to be identified, but he insisted they would support comprehensive immigration reform.

“If they ask me today, go find those 40 to 50 Republicans, I’ll tell them I found them. I know where they’re at,” Gutierrez said in an interview with Ed O’Keefe at the Washington Post.

End game, right there.  So no, the Senate bill will never get a vote, and the House GOP will play out the clock.

Meanwhile, In The Echo Chamber Of Rand Paul's Mind...

Rand Paul's interview with Bloomberg Businessweek's Joshua Green is something to behold, folks.  And by "something to behold" I mean "another in a long line of idiotic positions that immediately disqualify him from the White House."

What is your plan to refashion the GOP to draw more minority and younger voters?

All voters, but particularly young people, and often young people who are African American or Hispanic, I think they have a sense of justice, and they sometimes mistrust government with achieving justice. So one of the big issues that I’ve fought here is getting rid of the provision called indefinite detention. This is the idea that an American citizen could be accused of a crime, held indefinitely without charge, and actually sent from America to Guantánamo Bay and kept forever.

I think there is something in that message of justice and a right to a trial by jury and a right to a lawyer that resonate beyond the traditional Republican Party and will help us to grow the Republican Party with the youth. Defending the Internet’s privacy, these are all things that broaden the appeal of Republicans.

Sure, because when I think about how minorities are mistreated by the American justice system, I first think of indefinite detention in Gitmo.  That's going to resonate more than stop and frisk, Trayvon Martin, gun murders, the Voting Rights Act being destroyed, etc.  Awesome.

A recent article in the New Republic said your budget would eviscerate the departments of Energy, State, Commerce, EPA, FDA, Education, and many others. Would Americans support that?

My budget is similar to the Penny Plan, which cuts 1 percent a year for five or six years and balances the budget. Many Americans who have suffered during a recession have had to cut their spending 1 percent, and they didn’t like doing it, but they were able to do it to get their family’s finances back in order. I see no reason why government can’t cut 1 percent of its spending.

And when Americans figure out all those pennies are coming from only Energy, the EPA, the FDA, Education, and not the Pentagon, they might protest.

But the end takes the cake:

Who would your ideal Fed chairman be?
Hayek would be good, but he’s deceased.

Nondead Fed chairman.
Friedman would probably be pretty good, too, and he’s not an Austrian, but he would be better than what we have.

Dead, too.
Yeah. Let’s just go with dead, because then you probably really wouldn’t have much of a functioning Federal Reserve.

Can we stop pretending that Rand Paul is anything other than a massive embarrassment my state is stuck with until 2017?

Last Call For The Odious Patrick McHenry

Ahh yes, the Congressman of the Zandarparents, good ol' The Odious Patrick McHenry.  Of course he was going to have a town hall meeting bashing Obamacare in blood-red NC-10.

Only, the best laid plans of mice and men...

In Washington, D.C., Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) issues countless press releases boasting about his votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act, insisting that his constituents in North Carolina are clamoring for relief from the law. But during a town hall in Swannanoa on Wednesday, voters confronted the five-term Congressman with an entirely different sentiment: they demanded to know why Republicans would take away the law’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions without offering any credible other alternative for reforming the health care system. One grieving mother, who spoke to reporters before the event, said that her son was denied insurance because of a pre-existing health condition and eventually died of colon cancer. 

Oops.  You know Patrick, there are real people out there in towns like Mooresville, Lincolnton, Swannanoa and Hickory.  The area where I grew up got the crap kicked out of them in the 80's when textiles went under, in the 90's when NAFTA shipped industrial manufacturing jobs to Mexico, and in the Oughts when the dot-com bust took out the fiber optic cable plants, and it got crapped on again by the financial crisis here in the 2010's.  So yeah, you might want to remember that.

McHenry did offer a prescription for insuring individuals with pre-existing conditions, suggesting that sicker people who are cherry picked out of coverage on the individual market, should enroll in high-risk pools. The comment elicited boos from the crowd, as the plans, which are only open to sick people, are usually “unaffordable, unavailable or ineffective for many of those who most need health insurance.” The Affordable Care Act included a temporary program that failed to attract enough applicants and several states have experimented with similar initiatives. 

Sorry, Pat.  Here in the Unifour, people know what it's like to be out of work and to struggle with health care and insurance costs.  We happen to think the individual benefits of Obamacare are pretty damn necessary, even when we hate calling it Obamacare.

And if there's hope for health care reform even in fire-engine red NC-10, the rest of the country is asking what the Republicans plan to do after a repeal of Obamacare, too.

The Turtle Gets Shelled (By Friendly Fire)

The only thing better than Mitch McConnell getting panned by his opponents is Mitch McConnell getting panned by his own campaign director.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) campaign manager said he's begrudgingly working in his current capacity to help the presidential prospects of Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), according to an explosive phone recording that surfaced Thursday.

In the recording, obtained by Economic Policy Journal, Jesse Benton — who ran Paul's successful 2010 campaign before joining McConnell's team — told conservative activist Dennis Fusaro that he has an ulterior motive in working the GOP leader's 2014 campaign.

"Between you an me, I'm sorta holding my nose for two years," Benton said in the recording, "'cause what we're doing here is gonna be a big benefit to Rand in '16."

Oh my.  Damage control teams to the bridge!

Benton pushed back forcefully, issuing a statement to denounce the recording and reiterate his commitment to McConnell's campaign.

"It is truly sick that someone would record a private phone conversation I had out of kindness and use it to try to hurt me," he said in the statement. "I believe in Senator McConnell and am 100 percent committed to his re-election. Being selected to lead his campaign is one of the great honors of my life and I look forward to victory in November of 2014."

Needless to say, Tea Party challenger Matt Bevin's crew wasted zero time in jumping all over this one.

Even Mitch McConnell's campaign manager thinks Sen. McConnell isn't conservative and is holding his nose for 2 years #kysen...
— Matt Bevin (@MattBevin) August 8, 2013

And of course, Kentucky is the national laughing stock of political shenanigans once again.

YES! RT @darth: ok evan http://t.co/ZZ2QhiNcO3
— E McMorris-Santoro (@EvanMcSan) August 8, 2013

But you know, it's worth it to be reminded there's 15 more months of high-larious EPIC FAIL ahead.

Giving Them The Business

Jazz Shaw over at Hot Air is usually a reasonable moderate (he regularly embraces the title of RINO) but every now and again he reminds us of what a "reasonable, moderate Republican" really thinks.  Jazz takes issue with the notion that paying a bit more for a Big Mac will help fast food workers earn a living wage.

Finally, the wages they pay follow the same laws as the prices they charge. They pay their workers the least they can, either by law or because paying less would not attract the number of employees they require for operations. Just like every other business in the country. One point which seems to confuse the social justice battalion is this idea they seem to be stuck on that there is some sort of obligation or social contract which states that industry is obligated or intended to create jobs, and good paying ones at that. The fact is, job creation was never one of the driving factors in the evolution of industry. It was only a happy side effect. Business sees employees as expensive, problematic components in the corporate machine. (Sorry to be so harsh.) They get sick, they complain, they want raises, they make mistakes… robots are far preferable. But robots can’t do everything. One of the goals of any modern business model, I’m sad to say, is to reduce the number of employees to the minimum possible. All of these things render the McPoverty calculator pretty much irrelevant.

And that's how a whole hell of a lot of business owners (and Republicans in general) think.  Employees are a detriment, a cost, a problem.  They are a negative to be pared from a company's bottom line.

That social contract Jazz talks about used to exist in America.  Unions made that possible on a large scale for millions of American workers.  Then, somewhere along the line, employees became a business's greatest minus instead of the source of its growth and vitality.  "Get away with as few workers and with as low pay as possible" became the rule in American business, and without unions to fight back, that became the new normal.

Henry Blodget strongly disagrees with that new normal.

This view, unfortunately, is not just selfish and demeaning. It's also economically stupid. Those "costs" you are minimizing (employees) are also current and prospective customers for your company and other companies. And the less money they have, the fewer products and services they are going to buy.

Obviously, the folks who own and run America's big corporations want to do as well as they can for themselves. But the key point is this:

It is not a law that they pay their employees as little as possible.

It is a choice.

It is a choice made by senior managers and owners who want to keep the highest possible percentage of a company's wealth for themselves.

It is, in other words, a selfish choice.

It is a choice that reveals that, regardless of what they say about how much they value their employees, regardless of what euphemism they use to describe their employees ("associate," "partner," "representative," "team-member"), they, in fact, don't give a damn about their employees.

I don't believe every business in the country operates like that, but nearly all of them do.  Maybe we should be asking ourselves about why that is.

StupidiNews!

• Scientists at the National Institutes of Health say a new malaria vaccine has shown 100% effectiveness in early human trials.
• A Florida man has turned himself into police after admitting to killing his girlfriend and posting a picture of her body on Facebook.
• Washington DC park officials are turning to goats to clean an overgrown parcel of land inside the Congressional Cemetery.
• Electric car maker Tesla Motors beat quarterly expectations handily, boosting company stock prices and founder Elon Musk's bottom line by more than half a billion dollars.
• A Brooklyn member of a credit card theft ring which stole over 95,000 card numbers was sentenced to 22 to 44 years in prison.

Last Call For Fannie And Freddie

In a speech on fixing our broken housing market given in Phoenix on Tuesday, President Obama called for the end of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which pretty much ensures he's the Worst Socialist Ever(tm).  He had this to say about making the housing market stable again:

That begins with winding down the companies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. For too long, these companies were allowed to make big profits buying mortgages, knowing that if their bets went bad, taxpayers would be left holding the bag. It was “heads we win, tails you lose.” And it was wrong.

The good news is that there’s a bipartisan group of Senators working to end Fannie and Freddie as we know them. I support these kinds of efforts, and today I want to lay out four core principles for what I believe this reform should look like.

First, private capital should take a bigger role in the mortgage market. I know that must sound confusing to the folks who call me a raging socialist every day. But just like the health care law that set clear rules for insurance companies to protect consumers and make it more affordable for millions to buy coverage on the private market, I believe that while our housing system must have a limited government role, private lending should be the backbone of the housing market, including community-based lenders who view their borrowers not as a number, but as a neighbor.

Second, no more leaving taxpayers on the hook for irresponsibility or bad decisions. We encourage the pursuit of profit – but the era of expecting a bailout after your pursuit of profit puts the whole country at risk is over.

Third, we should preserve access to safe and simple mortgage products like the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. That’s something families should be able to rely on when they make the most important purchase of their lives.

Fourth, we have to keep housing affordable for first-time homebuyers and families working to climb into the middle class. We need to strengthen the FHA so it gives today’s families the same kind of chance it gave my grandparents, and preserves that rung on the ladder of opportunity. And we need to support affordable rental housing and keep up our fight against homelessness. Since I took office we’ve helped bring one in four homeless veterans off the streets. Here in Phoenix, thanks to the hard work of everyone from Mayor Stanton to the local United Way to US Airways, you’re on track to end chronic homelessness for veterans by 2014. But we have to keep going, because nobody in America, and certainly no veteran, should be left to live on the street.

Naturally, Republicans have already thought of this whole "wait a minute what if Obama calls our bluff on wanting to unwind Fannie and Freddie?  We should pass a bill that does that, only it's crazy."

A Republican-sponsored bill that would liquidate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and dramatically reduce the U.S. government backstop in the mortgage market was approved by a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday.

The House Financial Services Committee voted 30-27 largely along party lines to approve the bill. The split reflects a deep divide between Republicans and Democrats over how to remake the U.S. mortgage finance system, after the housing bubble burst and plunged the country into a severe credit crisis.

The House bill would abolish government-controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac within five years and replace them with a non-profit, utility-like platform that investors would use to securitize mortgages. Unlike mortgage securities offered by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the new securities would be issued without a government guarantee.

It also makes massive cuts to FHA loans and would basically eliminate 30-year mortgages overnight, leaving home ownership virtually unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans, but hey.  It gets rid of Fannie and Freddie!

Republicans are on it, folks.

Turns Out It's Good For You, Moose Lady

The latest data from the CDC suggests the First Lady's "Let's Move" initiative to reduce childhood obesity is having a significant impact on making kids healthier.  Zerlina Maxwell notes the programs success over at The Grio:

According to the report, the obesity rates for low income preschoolers has gone down in 19 states between 2008 and 2011. That news will be music to the ears of Let’s Move supporters who were tasked with the specific goal of fighting childhood obesity.

And of course the biggest critic of Michelle Obama over this?  Moose Lady.

The first lady was attacked incessantly by conservatives, including Sarah Palin, who were up in arms at Michelle Obama’s suggestion that American children exercise and eat vegetables.

Palin suggested in 2010, that it was the First Lady’s worldview that would give her the nerve to suggest that “parents [cannot] make decisions for their own children, for their own families in what we should eat.”

Palin also implied that it was a “God-given right” for children to be overweight, saying “[i]nstead of a government thinking that they need to take over and make decisions for us according to some politician or politician’s wife’s priorities, just leave us alone, get off our back, and allow us as individuals to exercise our own God-given rights to make our own decisions and then our country gets back on the right track,” to conservative radio host Laura Ingraham.

Palin might want to read up on adult obesity rates before commenting on the latest news. Before this decline, obesity rates for all age groups had been going up consistently for everyone for nearly 30 years straight. It’s quite possible that the high-profile focus on the issue has lead to this recent decline, since raising awareness is a key component to any campaign with the goal of serving the public’s welfare.

Ouch.

Hey folks, childhood obesity in the US has rocketed upwards since the Reagan years.  This is the first time anything has remotely gone down in decades.  You would think Sarah Palin, herself an avid runner and sportswoman, would appreciate what the First Lady is doing.

You won't get an apology out of this sour-ass moose though.

Well Now Here's Your Problem

As a medical IT professional, it really does bother the hell out of me to read stories about the IT side of the Obamacare health insurance exchanges not being ready by October 1.  Then I remember that Republicans have been doing everything possible to sabotage that work, and the work of people in my field, deliberately.

And then I get angry.

The federal government is months behind in testing data security for the main pillar of Obamacare: allowing Americans to buy health insurance on state exchanges due to open by October 1.

The missed deadlines have pushed the government's decision on whether information technology security is up to snuff to exactly one day before that crucial date, the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said in a report.

As a result, experts say, the exchanges might open with security flaws or, possibly but less likely, be delayed.

"They've removed their margin for error," said Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the non-profit Center for Democracy & Technology. "There is huge pressure to get (the exchanges) up and running on time, but if there is a security incident they are done. It would be a complete disaster from a PR viewpoint."

The most likely serious security breach would be identity theft, in which a hacker steals the social security numbers and other information people provide when signing up for insurance.

This happens to be the kind of thing I'm paid to deal with on a daily basis.  And yes, protecting patient data is of paramount concern to everyone in this particular field.  We'd be unemployed, rightfully, otherwise.

I am also then reminded that Republicans want IT engineers like me to fail.  They want to make an example of people like myself for their own political gain.  So yes, I take the Republican sabotage of Obamacare personally, especially the sabotage of the health care exchanges and data security surrounding them.  This is serious stuff, and you would think Republicans would want to make sure their own constituents had the utmost in data security for patient information.

Sadly, they hate Obama more, and are willing to starve these exchanges of resources they need in order to try to make a breach more likely.  Think about that, and keep that in mind when you hear about stories like this.

StupidiNews!

• Three winning tickets have been sold in last night's $448 million Powerball drawing, one in Minnesota and two in New Jersey.
• Ron Paul's 2012 campaign allegedly offered money to an Iowa lawmaker for an endorsement in the state.
• President Obama will not be going to Moscow to meet privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as US/Russia relations continue to sour over Edward Snowden.
• JP Morgan Chase is facing criminal charges brought by the Justice Department over mortgage-backed securities.
• A federal judge has ruled that Bitcoin is a currency, and can be regulated under US law.

Last Call For Sour Obamagrapes

I've often said that the chief motivating factor of any winger doing anything is because they believe it will annoy a liberal, but you can always return the favor by reminding them that Barack Obama was reelected President, and that they waste an awful lot of time trying to change something they're powerless to change.  Here in NOBAMA Country in the NKY, that means laughing at these particular morons.

Standing behind oversized “Impeach Obama” signs and waving American flags, protesters took to overpasses in Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties on Tuesday to voice their displeasure with the current administration.

As part of the nation-wide “Overpasses for Obama’s Impeachment” movement, the protestors manned overpasses over I-471 in Fort Thomas, and I-71/75 in Fort Wright and Florence, during the morning and afternoon rush hours, imploring motorists to show support by honking their horns.

They weren’t disappointed.

At the Kyles Lane overpass in Fort Wright, protesters could barely be heard over the sound of horns.

“It’s been great!,” said Vonda Pickens, the Independence mother who spearheaded the Northern Kentucky effort, an hour into the protest. “It was a little bit busier earlier, but the horns have been going on all morning. We’re pleased because, well, you never know.”

But NKY is tame compared to Arizona, it seems.  Hundreds of anti-Obama protesters showed up there for the President's speech on housing, and things got ugly, fast.

Racially-charged sentiment infused the protests and split the crowd both politically and physically. Obama supporters congregated on the west side of the road in front of the high school and his critics lined up across the street.

Obama foes at one point sang, "Bye Bye Black Sheep," a derogatory reference to the president's skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, "Impeach the Half-White Muslim!"

These folks seem nice.

Deanna Bartram, a 17-year-old University of Arizona student from Black Canyon City, lashed out at people who call her racist for not supporting Obama. She believes Obama supporters use the “race card” against her because they disagree with her political message.

“Obama is ruining American values. He is ruining the Constitution. He needs to go back to where he came from because obviously, he is a liar,” she said. “I am not racist. I am part Indian. Obama’s half Black, half White.”

“He’s 47 percent Negro,” shouted Ron Enderle, a 77-year-old Chandler resident who said that he and his son served as Marines and his grandson is currently serving in the Marines.

Enderle criticized the president mishandling security at the U.S. Benghazi Embassy.

“My grandson is third generation Marine, and it bothers me to have this man as our commander in chief. I’m ashamed,” Enderle said.

And of course, what better place to bring your kids so that they can join in this message of tolerance?

Judy Burris said that she blames Obama for racism in America reaching heights not seen since the 1960s Civil-Rights Era.

“We have gone back so many years,” she said. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.”

She said that she brought her 12-year-old grandson Christian Cabrera to the protests because she thought it would be educational.

“He’s Mexican,” she said of her grandson.

Cabrera said he wanted to accompany his grandma “so I could protest about impeaching Obama.”

What I do know Obama is still President, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.  Please enjoy your impotent rage, knowing that you're reduced to publicity stunts and sweating in the August heat on smoggy overpasses, and remember, tomorrow your president will still a black man you didn't vote for, but the rest of the country did.

If only the President was white again, right?  On behalf of African-Americans everywhere, I apologize for ruining your effing country, assholes.

Have a nice day.  In America.  With your black President.

Welcome To Your GOP, Rookie

Freshman GOP Congressman Robert Pittenger of North Carolina is finding out the hard way just what level of absolute lunacy he's signed up to join with today's Republican party.  His town hall meeting in NC-9's blood red Charlotte suburbs devolved into a verbal beatdown when Pittenger mentioned that he wasn't going to vote to shut down the government over Obamacare.

The exchange was captured and posted by the tea party website ConstitutionalWar.org. A man off camera can be heard asking Pittenger about the defunding effort spearheaded by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT).

"Do you want the thoughtful answer?" Pittenger asked.

"I want yes or no," the man said.

Pittenger then said "no," a clip that the tea party website re-played in slow-motion.

The lawmaker then had a back-and-forth with the man and a woman, who was also off camera.

"Do you think Harry Reid is going to pass that in the Senate?" Pittenger asked.

"It doesn't matter," the man fired back.

"We need to show the American people we stand for conservative values," the woman shouted, drawing a smattering of applause.

Because FREEDOM.   Hey, guess who most likely earned himself a primary challenger in a district that's been red for over 50 years?  This is where we are, folks.  Republicans don't want the "thoughtful answer".  They want rage, they want hatred, they want their way or it's game over.

Bus-ted In Beavercreek

Just your daily reminder that southwestern Ohio is literally half a mile over the river from rural Kentucky, and sometimes it's damn hard to tell the places apart.  I'm talking to you, Beavercreek, Ohio.

The showdown began in 2010 when the Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority proposed adding three new bus stops in Beavercreek, a largely white suburb 15 minutes east of Dayton. These new stops would give Dayton bus-riders access to Beavercreek’s major shopping mall and nearby businesses, as well as a medical clinic and Wright State University.

Facing the prospect of buses coming in from Dayton, the Beavercreek City Council began enacting as many hurdles as they could to stop the new bus stops. Among the dozen roadblocks included mandating that bus shelters included heated and air conditioning as well as high-tech surveillance cameras, features that would be hugely expensive and are not common at other stops.

Many in the area argue that their opposition boils down to a simple reason: race. According to the 2010 census, 9 in 10 Beavercreek residents are white, but 73 percent of those who ride the Dayton RTA buses are minorities. “I can’t see anything else but it being a racial thing,” Sam Gresham, state chair of Common Cause Ohio, a public interest advocacy group, told ThinkProgress. “They don’t want African Americans going on a consistent basis to Beavercreek.”

So yeah, this mess with Dayton and Beavercreek has been going on for years, and somebody finally figured out this was actionable discrimination.

A civil rights group in the area, Leaders for Equality in Action in Dayton (LEAD), soon filed a discrimination lawsuit against Beavercreek under the Federal Highway Act. In June, the Federal Highway Administration ruled that Beavercreek’s actions were indeed discriminatory and ordered them to work with the Dayton Regional Transit Authority to get the bus stops approved without delay.

Beavercreek, though, isn’t particularly keen to do that. The city council voted most recently on Friday to put off consideration of the matter until later this month. They are weighing whether to appeal the federal ruling, or perhaps whether to just defy it altogether. Appealing the ruling could cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, according to a Washington D.C. lawyer the council hired. However, non-compliance with the ruling could cost Beavercreek tens of millions of dollars in federal highway funds.

So yeah, Beavercreek has about five weeks left to comply with the ruling, or the city's out millions.  And that's going to really piss off a lot of people, far more than just putting the damn bus stops in from Dayton.  It's silly as hell.

This isn't 1963.  Deal with it.

StupidiNews!

• President Obama discussed a number of topics with Tonight Show host Jay Leno on Tuesday, including embassy closings, Edward Snowden, and more.
• A group of Virginia activists will be flying a giant Confederate battle flag over I-95 near Richmond, having leased land to do so from the state.
• Former President George W. Bush is expected to be released from the hospital today after a routine physical on Monday prompted heart surgery to place a stent in a blocked artery.
• Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged full assistance to TEPCO officials in cleaning up radioactive water leaks from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
• Climate scientists say despite dwindling Himalayan glaciers, snow melt will continue to provide plenty of water to rivers like the Ganges and Yangtze.