Last Call For Argle Bargle Bloogity Bloo

This country is insane.

A birther preacher is pushing the conspiracy theory that Miriam Carey, who was shot to death Oct. 3 after police said she tried to ram her car into a barrier outside the White House, was the mother of President Barack Obama’s illegitimate child. 

Rev. James David Manning, pastor of Atlah World Missionary Church who believes the president was born in Kenya, claims that Carey’s family has called for a paternity test to determine whether the woman’s 15-month-old daughter was fathered by the president. 

While Carey’s family has indeed asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to look into the fatal shooting, the only source for the claim about the family’s request for a paternity test seems to be additional videos posted online by Manning. 

He also links to a Change.org petition purportedly set up by Carey’s sister asking for more investigation, but that too fails to mention a paternity test.

Thanks, Obama!

The Other Side: Hobby Lobby's Waging War

A Twitter exchange this morning with Hot Air's Jazz Shaw about Hobby Lobby partially resulted in this post on something we both agree on:  the pending Hobby Lobby SCOTUS case will have far-ranging effects on American businesses and employees, and that the religious freedoms of the company are not the real issue (bold emphasis mine:)

But this leads us to what I think should be the real debate at the heart of this case. The question I would like to hear the SCOTUS justices ask the participants in this case is as follows: “Do you believe that the government has the power to tell employers how many days of paid vacation they have to offer their employees?” 

Employers offer a collection of things to prospective applicants for job openings which the HR department collectively refers to as a compensation package. This goes far beyond the wages offered, covering items such as vacation, sick time, casual Fridays, employer contributions to 401K plans and, yes, health care options. Different companies offer different packages, and as you would expect, those who offer the best collection of benefits will attract the most and the best applicants. The employer must balance the costs of all this against their bottom line. 

Conversely, an employer who offers virtually nothing but the bare minimum wage will attract only those who can’t find a position anywhere else. They may show up for work most of the time, but they will hardly be motivated to excel and further the company’s goals, generally keeping an eye on the clock and the door, hoping for a chance to bolt to a better situation. Such a company is unlikely to do well. It’s the invisible hand of the market at work yet again. So the real question I’m asking is not if the employer has the religious freedom to single out certain items of health care which they will or will not offer, but rather if they have the freedom to decide which – if any – benefits they offer the employee of any kind and to live with the consequences of those decisions. If the Hobby Lobby case actually settles anything, I’d hope it would be that question rather than the religious liberty debate which dominates the headlines.

And this is a point where I freely admit Jazz and I are on different sides.  Jazz argues that businesses should be able to determine in a free market system what compensation and benefits they can offer, and that the government should step aside and let the market determine the winners.  My argument is that if a local, state, or federal government elects people who create laws to mandate minimums that apply to all businesses and those laws are passed by elected officials in a representative democracy, then businesses are obligated to follow those laws.

It's classic libertarian versus liberal stuff here.  US v. Darby Lumber Company, decided in 1941, clearly held that under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution that since Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, and that Congress has the power to regulate commerce, then a federal minimum wage was within the purview of the Congress.   That's the same legal logic behind the Affordable Care Act's minimum coverage laws for health insurance, including birth control.

The issue of the scope of what constitutes "commerce" has long been a bone of contention in American jurisprudence, as the Tenth Amendment declares intrastate commerce the dominion of states themselves. Either way, states all have minimum wage laws that cover this as well, even if it just says "The minimum wage is whatever the federal minimum wage is right now."  Some states have higher minimum wages than the federal one.  Those too are constitutional.

So that again brings us back to Jazz's question:  do businesses have any real freedom to decide what they can offer employees at all?  Would allowing them to do so help the American economy?

My answer is yes, they do, and yes, at the expense of workers.  Look, let's not split hairs here on this:  a business is in business to turn a profit, and in nearly every business I can think of, from lemonade stands to professional sports teams, the number one cost of a business is paying employees.  If we got rid of the minimum wage tomorrow, you can bet that the invisible hand of the free market would pull everyone's wages down.  If your employer can pay you less for the same work, they're going to do it.

If I'm Wal-Mart, and I have shareholders, my job is to provide maximum profit to the shareholders.  So if I can get away with paying my cashiers $2 an hour, and I can find cashiers who will work for that much, then I win.  Are they going to be the best cashiers?  Probably not, but you know what?  If I'm the nation's largest private employer and I drastically lower wages, and I've driven local competition out of business, and I can lower my prices even further in order to keep customers, I win again.

The real issue is not whether or not we need a minimum wage or regulation of benefits, it's whether or not we want to be a country where working 40 hours a week is enough to support a household.  Increasingly, the answer is no, and that has long term repercussions.  After all, workers that don't get paid don't have money to spend.

Recount Redux In Virginia

It's official:  Republican Mark Obenshain has officially filed for a recount in his 165-vote loss to Democrat Mark Herring for the Virginia Attorney General's race, and TPM's Dan Strauss has the details:

A three-judge panel is formed for overseeing the election process. The panel, made up of the chief judge of the Richmond Circuit Court, Bradley B. Cavedo, and two other judges appointed by the Supreme Court of Virginia will oversee the recount. Most of the rules for the recount are already established but the panel will handle setting some of the procedures for the recount as well as any complaints either the Obenshain campaign or Herring campaign has about how the recount is going. The panel will hold hearings roughly a week after the Obenshain campaign's recount petition has been filed to establish the specific dates and procedures for the recount.

The Obenshain campaign said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday morning that it expected the recount to happen sometime in mid-December and that it would likely take a day, possibly two, for all the ballots to be recounted.

This recount will be different from previous Virginia recounts in that all ballots counted through optical scan will be rescanned again. That's in contrast to the 2005 attorney general recount between Bob McDonnell (R) and Creigh Deeds (D). State law during that recount said that the three-judge panel had to re-tabulate scanned ballots by hand. In 2008, Deeds sponsored legislation changing the law so all scanned ballots went through optical scan machines again instead of a hand recount. All other types of ballots cast in the race, including provisional and absentee, will be hand counted again.

What I don't expect:  the idiotic Minnesota Al Franken/Norm Coleman 2008 recount that took well into 2009 before Franken was declared the winner.  Hopefully Herring will be declared the victor before Christmas.

We'll keep an eye on this one.

StupidiNews!

• US and Japanese officials are investigating an "improvised explosive device" found outside a US airbase in Japan.
• The Elkhart, Indiana Pizza Hut manager who was fired for closing his store on Thanksgiving so his employees could enjoy the holiday has been reinstated by corporate, but he doesn't know if he'll accept.
• The Congressional Black Caucus is asking Attorney General Eric Holder to take a closer look at Ohio's proposed voter ID and early voting restriction bills.
• Retailers are taking even more precautions this year to prevent any injuries or deaths from crowds of eager Black Friday shoppers.
• Georgia police apparently caught a group of people trying to sneak tobacco into a state prison by using a commercial drone.

StupidiNews, Turkey Day Edition!

• The International Atomic Energy Agency is accepting Iran's invitation to send nuclear inspectors to its Arak nuclear facility on December 8th.
• The Obama administration has pushed back the debut of the online marketplace for small businesses to shop for group health care plans until next November.
• With House Republicans blocking any tax increases, states from Maryland to Wyoming are resorting to their own tax measures to pay for roads and bridges in dire need of repair.
• President Obama and the First Family stopped by the Capital Area Food Bank to put together Thanksgvining meals for DC's neediest.
• A British journalist admits he had a number of Bitcoins on his hard drive that went to a London landfill, and now that data is worth $7.5 million.

Last Call For A Streetcar Named Retired

Something funny happened on the way to Cincinnati Mayor-elect John Cranley's destiny to kill the city's streetcar project:  the painful reality of cold hard mathematics.

The total cost of cancelling Cincinnati's streetcar could run as high as $125 million, just $8 million less than the estimated cost to complete it, according to the project manager.

The $133 million project faces the threat of cancellation when mayor-elect John Cranley takes office next month; killing the streetcar was Cranley's top campaign promise.

Streetcar project manager John Deatrick outlined the cost of cancellation at a special session of City Council's Budget and Finance Committee this afternoon. The costs include:

• $32.8 million spent so far which will not be returned
• $30.6 million to $47.6 million to close down the project
• $45 million in lost federal funds

Whoops.  As such, suddenly the support Cranley had on the incoming city council to nuke the project is a bit on the wanting side.

Cranley had six anti-streetcar votes on the new nine-member council. But one member said yesterday that he no longer supports stopping construction. 

“It feels neither prudent nor fiscally responsible to scrap the whole thing,” Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld said. 

Sittenfeld said the possibility that the city won’t have to pay an estimated $3.5 million to $4.5 million in annual operating costs helped influence his change of mind. He said fares and sponsorships will partly cover those costs.

Sittenfeld also supports creating a special improvement district to pay for the rest of the operating costs. That plan would require property owners along the route to pay higher taxes than other city-property owners. Sixty percent of the affected owners would have to agree to the plan in order for the district to be created.

That's an idea I actually agree with, and it seems like a very good compromise.  Indeed, it seems after backing Cranley for Mayor, the Cincinnati Enquirer is now warming up to the project.

It seems the reports of the streetcar project being dead are greatly exaggerated.

A Failure To Communicate

As with the "failed stimulus" and "failed recovery" and "failed foreign policy" of the Obama administration, none of which were actual failures (but that doesn't matter if you call them failures enough times) we now have "failed Obamacare" as the latest Republican tautology.

With Obamacare facing its deadline for website functionality, Republicans appear absolutely, irrevocably, 100 percent certain the law’s total collapse is at hand, or even already complete. However, they may be the only ones who are convinced of this.

A new CNN poll tests public opinion on the law in a way I haven’t seen before — and it shows Republicans are the only group who believe the law’s problems can’t be solved and that it should now be pronounced a failure. Independents and moderates believe it can still work.

To be sure, opposition is running high, at 58 percent, as in many other polls, and virtually no one believes the law is a success, which is as it should be. This means, again, that the rollout continues to put Democrats in serious political peril. But disapproval does not necessarily translate into giving up on the law, which matters, because it goes to whether people will enroll in the numbers necessary to make it work over time.

The poll finds 53 percent of Americans say it’s too soon to tell if the law will succeed or fail, versus 39 percent who pronounce it a failure. That latter sentiment is driven by Republicans: Independents say it’s too soon to tell by 55-41; moderates by 58-35. But Republicans overwhelmingly believe it’s a failure by 70-25.

The poll also finds 54 percent believe current problems facing the law will eventually be solved, versus 45 percent who don’t. Again, that latter sentiment is driven by Republicans: Independents think they will be solved by 50-48; moderates by 55-43. By contrast, Republicans overwhelmingly believe they won’t be solved by 72-27.

So the jury's still out for most of America except for the GOP  Surprise!  But there's two major bright spots:

Crucially, young Americans — who are important to the law’s success – overwhelmingly believe the problems will be solved (71 percent). Part of the campaign by Republicans to persuade Americans that the law’s doom is inevitable is about dissuading people from enrolling, to turn that into a self fulfilling prophesy. 

By the way: The CNN poll also finds that of those who oppose the law, 14 percent say it’s not liberal enough — meaning the total who support the law or want it to go further is 54 percent, versus 41 percent who say it’s too liberal.

I cannot overemphasize the second point enough there.  A majority of Americans want Obamacare to succeed.  The GOP rooting for failure, and in fact taking steps to make it fail, will not go unnoticed by voters.

A Trey-tor To The Cause

If you want to know why Florida Republicans are suddenly throwing rehab-bound GOP Rep. Trey Radel under the bus and demanding his resignation, it's because Connie Mack IV, son of former GOP Sen. Connie Mack III, wants his old House seat back.

Former Rep. Connie Mack has begun reaching out to supporters to run for Rep. Trey Radel’s House seat, several sources tell POLITICO. 

Mack (R-Fla.) gave the seat up in 2012 when he ran unsuccessfully against Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). But with Radel in rehabilitation following his arrest for possession of cocaine, Mack is trying to shore up support. One Republican lobbyist said that Mack has “made his intention known.” 

As he undergoes rehab in Naples, Fla., Radel is coming under increasing pressure to give up his House seat. On Tuesday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) said Radel should step down, according to the Fort Myers News-Press. On Monday night, Lenny Curry, the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, called on Radel to “step down and focus his attention on rehabilitation and his family.” The two local party chairs in Radel’s southwest Florida district also called on the first-term Republican to step down, and said if he decides to run again, he will not have their support. 

Radel is on probation for one year. He was caught buying cocaine from a federal agent in Washington. 

Radel’s district is solidly Republican, so if he decides not to resign, he’ll certainly face a primary challenger on Aug. 26. A source close to Mack, who would not speak for attribution, said the former congressman has not decided whether he would primary Radel.

So yeah, if this is true, Radel is toast and Mack gets his old digs back in a safe red district that he already lives in.  Bonus points: Mack gets to dodge any heat for the government shutdown, which he was not in office for.  A real no-brainer for the no-brainers here, it seems.

Would love to see a Dem run here.

StupidiNews!

• The US is getting involved in the continued Chinese dispute with Japan over airspace in the South China Sea by flying unarmed B-52 bombers through the area as normal.
• Pope Francis delivered a major statement on charity and economic inequality by attacking financial speculation and calling on world leaders to increase social justice.
• 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan and her producer have been placed on administrative leave after questions surfaced about the validity of a story on the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi last year.
• The IRS has released guidance for so-called "social welfare" organizations, some of which spent hundreds of millions on influencing elections.
• The Bitcoin bubble is leading to real robberies and hacker heists as at least 3 major multi-million dollar thefts of Bitcoins have happened across the globe in the last month.

Last Call For General Hospital...Closures

Just a reminder that in red states where Republicans turned down Medicaid expansion, rural hospitals are closing and people are dying as a direct result.

At least five public hospitals closed this year and many more are scaling back services, mostly in states where Medicaid wasn’t expanded. Patients in areas with shuttered hospitals must travel as far as 40 miles (64 kilometers) to get care, causing delays that can result in lethal consequences, said Bruce Siegel, chief executive officer of America’s Essential Hospitals, a Washington-based advocacy group for facilities that treat large numbers of uninsured or low-income patients.

“Everyone in a community will be affected,” Siegel said. “We could see the end of life-saving services, and patients would bear the brunt.”

Hospitals have dismissed at least 5,000 employees across the country since June, mostly in states that haven’t expanded the joint state-federal Medicaid health program for the poor as anticipated under the U.S. health overhaul known as Obamacare. Hospitals like the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee and Indiana University Health are among providers seeking cost savings in areas such as cancer treatment, mental health and infant care. 

And just so it's clear whose fault this is:

Obama proposed delaying for a year the subsidy cuts for hospitals to give states more time to expand Medicaid. Congress didn’t go along with his proposal.  

Republicans blocked Medicaid, Republicans blocked doing anything about the subsidy cuts.  So hospitals are closing in red states and people are dying.  Point blank.  Your death panels making life and death decisions about people's health care choices are called "Republican state and congressional lawmakers."

Any questions?

A Heckler Of A Problem

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the President of the United States of America handles a heckler, in a country where free speech is enshrined into the Constitution.  It happened Monday during the president's speech in San Francisco:

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Mr. President, please use your executive order to halt deportations for all 11.5 undocumented immigrants in this country right now.
THE PRESIDENT: What we’re trying –
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Do you agree
AUDIENCE: Obama! Obama! Obama!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: — that we need to pass comprehensive immigration reform at the same time we — you have a power to stop deportation for all undocumented immigrants in this country.
THE PRESIDENT: Actually I don’t. And that’s why we’re here.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: So, please, I need your help.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay —
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Stop deportations!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Stop deportations!
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. All right.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Stop deportations! Stop deportations!
THE PRESIDENT: What I’d like to do — no, no, don’t worry about it, guys. Okay, let me finish.
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Stop deportations! Yes, we can! Stop deportations!
THE PRESIDENT: These guys don’t need to go. Let me finish. No, no, no, he can stay there. Hold on a second. (Applause.) Hold on a second.
So I respect the passion of these young people because they feel deeply about the concerns for their families. Now, what you need to know, when I’m speaking as President of the United States and I come to this community, is that if, in fact, I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so.
But we’re also a nation of laws. That’s part of our tradition. And so the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like I can do something by violating our laws. And what I’m proposing is the harder path, which is to use our democratic processes to achieve the same goal that you want to achieve. But it won’t be as easy as just shouting. It requires us lobbying and getting it done. (Applause.)

As PoliticusUSA's Jason Easley points out, this is exactly what the President should have said and did say.

The president didn’t have the heckler removed. He didn’t insult or try to humiliate the heckler. Instead, he listened and had a dialogue about his concerns. The president also made an important point during the conversation. 

He can’t wave a magic wand and stop the deportations. It will take comprehensive immigration reform to change our system. Even if Obama could magically stop the deportations, is that the way we want our country to be governed? 

If President Obama stopped the deportations, there would be nothing to stop the next president from reversing his policy and adopting a harsher policy. The way to get lasting change is to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill through Congress. 

The passion of activists deserves our appreciation, but many activists don’t understand how to use their activism to change the way the nation is governed. Anyone who yells and wants President Obama to snap his fingers and make something happen is pretending. They aren’t being honest with themselves about the slow and often frustrating policy process. 

These activists shouldn’t be yelling at President Obama. They should be yelling at John Boehner. There is enough support in the House to pass the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, but Speaker Boehner will not allow a vote.

Which is the point.  It's not President Obama preventing the House from taking a vote to pass immigration reform.  It's Orange Julius.  The Senate has once again passed comprehensive immigration reform.  The House refuses to even consider the bill precisely because it would pass.

And that failure is 100% on John Boehner.

Unfortunately, it's something the heckler himself seems incapable of getting.

A pro-immigration activist who on Monday heckled President Barack Obama during a speech on comprehensive immigration reform told CNN he found Obama's response "very disappointing." 

"This is very urgent," Ju Hong, a graduate of the University of California-Berkeley, told CNN afterwards. "This is the only venue where I could speak out, and I'm representing the voices of other undocumented students who are actually in the detention center right now who can not be here."

You got your free speech.  You don't like it?  Next time, keep your mouth shut.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Go home, French intelligence.  You're drunk.

French spies plotted to pose as neo-Nazis to assassinate Abu Hamza, the hate cleric, in London because they were so frustrated with Britain’s failure to deal with him, it was claimed Sunday. 

They planned to send the fanatic fake death threats from the far-Right group Combat 18 before shooting him with weapons said to be associated with that group. 

In a separate move, they also plotted to kidnap Hamza and take him to France, a report by the campaign group Hope not Hate claimed. 

Intelligence services across the Channel hatched the assassination plan in 1999, amid tensions between the two countries over the scale of Islamist extremism in Britain.

Just...no.  Bad, bad France.  Bad.  Every single aspect of this idea was horrible and stupid and bad.  Bad bad bad bad bad.

I mean I know the plan was 14 years ago, but...really?  This was before Bush/Cheney made this kinda of thing "socially acceptable".

Bad France.

StupidiNews!

• Connecticut State Police have issued a final report on last December's deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, finding shooter Adam Lanza had no apparent clear motive.
• The US Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday involving retailer Hobby Lobby and its objections on religious grounds to providing contraceptive health coverage for employees.
• The chairman of Florida's Republican party is calling on embattled GOP Rep. Trey Radel to resign after Radel's admission of cocaine use and current stint in rehab.
• Scotland nationalists have unveiled a plan for an independent Scotland free from the UK and using the pound as currency.
• The latest computer scam involves fraudsters using legitimate remote tech support programs to "fix" fake problems, charge users hefty fees, and then use access to the computers to steal passwords and information.

Last Call For The Stuebenville Shuffle

Ohio AG Mike Dewine is still a voter-suppressing douchebag, but he promised to do the right thing in the Steubenville rape case, and it looks like that his office has finally delivered with new charges.

A grand jury investigating the 2012 rape of a 16-year-old girl in Steubenville, Ohio, has indicted four school employees, including the school superintendent, who faces felony charges, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced Monday.

Steubenville City Schools Superintendent Michael McVey faces three felony counts: one charge of tampering with evidence and two counts of obstructing justice. He also is charged with making a false statement and obstructing official business, both misdemeanors, DeWine said.

Also indicted was elementary school principal Lynnett Gorman and wrestling coach Seth Fluharty, both of whom are charged with misdemeanor failure to report child abuse. Volunteer assistant Steubenville football coach Matt Bellardine was charged with four misdemeanors: allowing underage drinking, obstructing official business, making a false statement and contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a child.

This brings to six the number of people the grand jury has indicted after two students were convicted of rape, DeWine said. A school technology director and his daughter were indicted in October.

All I have to say is good, and about gorram time.  The school apparently did everything they could to protect the high school football program and not the student who was raped.  If that's the mindset of a school superintendent, they deserve to face felony charges.

The two boys convicted of the crime are serving their time, but the real book needs to be thrown at the adults who enabled them, and good for DeWine getting this right.

Fitting then that these indictments were announced on the United Nations' International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

A Healthy Load Of Crap

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker has some interesting ideas about what constitutes a "healthy balance" of rights when it comes to same-sex anything, apparently.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV that was recorded on Friday, host Al Hunt asked the Wisconsin governor if the U.S. House should follow the Senate and pass a bill banning discrimination against LGBT people. 

Walker insisted that he had not looked at the Senate measure barring workplace discrimination, but said that Wisconsin had similar laws in place for years. 

“They’ve worked quite effectively,” he explained. “We’re also a state that has a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as one man, one woman.” 

“We’ve had no problems… limited problems with that,” Walker added. “At the same time, we have a constitutional amendment that defines marriage.” 

“There’s a healthy balance there.”

Gotta have the parts where you treat The Gay(tm) like human beings offset by treating them as diseased lunatics who could spread The Gayness(tm).  That's a "healthy balance" if you're a Republican bigot, apparently.  Good cop, bad cop.  Carrot and stick.  Anti-discrimination laws and enshrined bigotry.

What?  Rights are rights and not subject to whatever the hell bigots want to define them as?  Boy, where have you been for the last 150 years?

Everything's Coming Up Munich

John Holbo over at Crooked Timber isn't the only person to notice the neo-con crowd has completely lost anything remotely marble-shaped over this Iran deal:

I knew folks on the right were going to be upset about the Iran deal, but isn’t this a bit much? The Corner has gone Everyday-is-like-Munich full neocon. 

OK, maybe there’s no point in even bothering, but just look at this post, “Munich II”, by James Jay Carafano (vice president of foreign- and defense-policy studies at the Heritage Foundation.) He is banging on about how ‘realism’, presumably in the I-R sense, opposes this deal. But, even as he’s trying to make the case, he can’t help inadvertently making the case that the other side has got the better realist case. 

What does Carafano think we should hold out for? “Any diplomatic deal that is not grounded in shared interests or a common sense of justice will surely fail.” 

That just means there’s no possibility of any diplomatic deal. Ever. If there’s any truth to realism. States are self-interested. Iran wants what’s good for Iran. US wants what’s good for US. There isn’t any overriding, operative sense of justice that overrides all that. So we’re done. This is Realism 101, right?

Yes, followed by the part where we pick up Iran and throw them against the wall for good measure a couple of times to let them know that this is our planet, and you can either be our friend and helpful vassal to our corporate oligarchy or get Regime Change(tm).  All this Munich 1938/Neville Chamberlain garbage is because Obama has called their bluff.  Now these idiots are left hoping that a nuclear weapon detonates in a major American city and kills hundreds of thousands just so they can say "I told you so."

And since us getting nuked is now "assured", we have every right apparently to go flatten Iran first before that happens.  Consequences, schmonsequences!

Of course, I'm also told there's no difference between Obama and Bush, so why Obama keeps doing the opposite of what Bush would have done and proving otherwise is just making things very inconvenient for certain parts of the Left.

StupidiNews!

• A major winter storm has claimed 8 lives over the weekend as snow and ice continue to fall in the desert Southwest and Texas.
• China is warning the US to stay out of its dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands as Beijing's navy is moving to blockade the area.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu voiced total opposition to this weekend's six-party deal with Iran, saying it is not a party to the settlement and that it reserves the right to take action for self-defense.
• By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Swiss voters rejected a referendum that would limit CEO pay to 12 times that of the company's average worker.
• Texas's state school board has approved all but one science textbook with the science parts intact, with provisional approval for the last.

Obamacare Is Working In Kentucky

In the states where Obamacare is allowed to work without GOP sabotage, it's an incredible system.  There's no greater example of this than right here in Kentucky.

Places such as Breathitt County, in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky, are driving the state’s relatively high enrollment figures, which are helping to drive national enrollment figures as the federal health exchange has floundered. In a state where 15 percent of the population, about 640,000 people, are uninsured, 56,422 have signed up for new health-care coverage, with 45,622 of them enrolled in Medicaid and the rest in private health plans, according to figures released by the governor’s office Friday.

If the health-care law is having a troubled rollout across the country, Kentucky — and Breathitt County in particular — shows what can happen in a place where things are working as the law’s supporters envisioned.

One reason is that the state set up its own health-insurance exchange, sidestepping the troubled federal one. Also, Gov. Steve Beshear (D) is the only Southern governor to sign on to expanded eligibility parameters for Medicaid, the federal health-insurance program for the poor.

The real benefit here is Medicaid expansion. Kentucky has already knocked more than a full percentage point off the number of uninsured, tens of thousands of people.  In just a month, a sizable dent has been made in the state's uninsured population.  This is what Obamacare was supposed to do all along:  give states the tools to control their health costs and to help their people.

It's Republicans who have refused the program and wrecked the ship.  You can complain about the federal website all you want, but the real issue is Republicans are making this fail for millions on purpose and are complaining about why it's not working.  It's not working because they've done everything they possibly can to make it not work in more than half the states.

Where it is working?  Kentucky.  Think about that.

Iran Towards The Finish Line

Everything you possibly need to know about last night's historic "5+1" group nuclear deal with Iran is the reaction of NRO's Daniel Pipes.

This wretched deal offers one of those rare occasions when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and Nov. 24 will be remembered along with Munich and Sep. 29. 

Barack Obama has made many foreign-policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster. Along with the health-care law, it is one of his worst-ever steps. John Kerry is a too-eager puppy looking for a deal at any price. 

With the U.S. government forfeiting its leadership role, the Israelis, Saudis, and perhaps others are left to cope with a bad situation made worse. War has now become a much more likely prospect. Shame on we Americans for reelecting Barack Obama.

Shame on us for electing the guy who didn't want to drag us into another decade-long Middle East shooting war!  Munich 1938!  Neville Chamberlain!  Abandoned Israel!

Of course, it's not like Pipes was every right about anything in the Middle East to begin with, the dope's been on the wrong side of history on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and now Iran.

The fact that he's sputtering invective this morning tells me everything I need to know.

Last Call For The New Blockbusters

Zandardad flagged this article for me this morning and it's an important one.  LA Times political writer Mike Memoli discusses the critical mass of newer Democratic senators elected since 2006 who have A) only known a Senate majority, and B) only known of Republicans blocking everything they possibly could.  They feel no allegiance to the empty rhetoric of Senate comity because they've never seen it, they only have seen various occasions where Senate Republicans have weakened Democrats' legislation in return for their votes, and then House Republicans simply block it when these same Senate Republicans abandon their own positions to kneel to the Tea Party.

In other words, after 7 years, they are sick of being suckers.  And they've finally convinced Harry Reid to push the button.

"The Senate is a graveyard for good ideas," Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who along with Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon led the filibuster reform effort and won over veteran colleagues in a body where seniority was once the most valuable currency. 

This newer class of Democrats came to Washington, not unlike the tea party Republicans, with a strong commitment to their ideals and policy goals. But while the tea party rule in the House has been characterized by attempts to stifle the president's agenda, Democrats see their goal as helping to implement it. 

Thursday's action to limit the use of filibusters — seen as so drastic it was termed the "nuclear option" — shows they are willing to carve out a different path to get there. 

"There's a time to reach across the aisle and there's a time to hold the line," said Sen. Christopher S. Murphy (D-Conn.), the body's youngest member at 40, who was elected in 2012. "And I think so far this year Democrats in the Senate have done a very good job of mixing across-the-aisle compromise with some heretofore unseen spine-stiffening." 

The time has come for Democrats to take a harder stance against the tea party Republicans, he said. 

"These folks have come to Washington to destroy government from within and will use any tool at their disposal," Murphy said. "To the extent that we have the ability to take tools away from the tea party, we should do it. And one of the tools was the filibuster. Another was the belief that Democrats would cave in the face of another shutdown or debt default."

Keep your eye on Chris Murphy.  He's only a few years older than I am, and I couldn't agree with him more. When a bully punches you in the mouth and then bends the rules so he can keep doing it, you have to fight back. 

And keep in mind at various times, all of these "Republican moderates" like McCain, Murkowski, Collins, etc have voted in lockstep with the tea party to block President Obama.

Why play their game?  Good for the Dems to stand up to these assholes.