Last Call For Orange Water

Of course House Speaker John Boehner wasn't planning on bringing up any legislation that might strengthen water regulations after last week's massive West Virginia coal chemical spill that contaminated the water for 300,000 people.  Why, that's just silly.

"We have enough regulations on the books. What the administration ought to be doing is their jobs," Boehner said at a weekly press conference on Capitol Hill. 

While Boehner said that somebody ought to be held accountable for the failure in oversight, the Speaker explained his party was focused on eliminating "cumbersome, over-the-top" regulations that were "costing the American people jobs." 

The site's tanks, owned by Freedom Industries, don't fall under an inspection program and the chemicals stored there weren't considered hazardous enough to require permits before they leaked into the Elk River nearby.

Huh.  The administration should be "doing their jobs" huh.

The site of a West Virginia chemical spill that contaminated the water supply for 300,000 people operated largely outside government oversight, highlighting gaps in regulations and prompting questions on whether local communities have a firm grasp on potential threats to drinking water. 

The storage facility owned by Freedom Industries Inc. on the banks of the Elk River was subject to almost no state and local monitoring, interviews and records show. The industrial chemical that leaked into the river, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol, isn't closely tracked by federal programs. A state regulator had said earlier that, before last week's spill, environmental inspectors hadn't visited the site since 1991. On Monday, the state said it had located another inspection from 2002 related to a remediation project done by the site's previous owner.

It's almost like Republicans are doing everything they can to weaken regulations and to starve the agencies supposedly in charge of oversight so that they can't do their job.  After all, inspections of underground tanks full of dangerous polluting chemicals (being stored near a river that provides drinking water to hundreds of thousands) occurring more than once every 20-25 years or so is burdensome on our poor corporate masters.

As far as the folks in West Virginia who still can't drink the water, well, America and Freedom.

Meanwhile, here in Cincy...

Cincinnati plans to shut down intake valves along the Ohio River to protect the city's drinking water from a chemical spill in West Virginia. 

Mayor John Cranley announced Monday that the valves will be shut down for at least 20 hours beginning Tuesday night. Cranley says that will allow the water to pass the city without any chemicals entering the drinking supply. 

The city plans to use a reserve of 60 hours of treated water, built up specially following the West Virginia spill.

So yes, this affects more than just the people of West Virginia, but people in multiple states.  Like Southwestern Ohio.  You know, where John Bohner's district is.  Perhaps Orange Julius should give a damn, as this is affecting his own constituents who live and work in Cincinnati and Dayton and get their water from the Ohio River.

The Core Of Cory Booker

Over at TNR, Ryan Cooper asks why Sen. Cory Booker is "trying to undermine President Obama" on Iran sanctions despite last weekend's agreement to move forward with a six-month interim deal starting Monday.

American and Iranian negotiators came to an agreement Sunday on a six-month deal to put the Iranian nuclear program on hold in exchange for easing sanctions slightly, in the hopes of reaching a more permanent agreement in the interim. Meanwhile, at last count, 59 senators are supporting a bill that would impose new sanctions—among them Cory Booker, the brand-new New Jersey senator. President Barack Obama has threatened to veto it. 

The bill's supporters insist that they're simply trying to improve the U.S. negotiating posture. On Twitter, Booker insisted that he favors a peaceful solution, adding, "I'm 4 additional sanctions if current negotiations fail 2 start or fail 2 work." A senior aide told Joshua Hersh and Ryan Grim, "The goal isn't to disrupt things, it's to make Iran even more willing to make serious concessions by making them aware of what will happen if they don't." 

This isn't credible. First of all, the administration presumably has some idea of what's best for its negotiating position, and it has been lobbying furiously against new sanctions. Second, the timing is suspect—these senators hurriedly drew up this bill only after the breakthrough in negotiations was announced. Third, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif himself said new sanctions would signal a lack of good faith that would kill any long-term agreement. 

No, this bill is an attempt to kill the Iran deal, whether Booker and company admit that or not. No other explanation makes half as much sense.

Yes and no.  Booker's "good cop, bad cop" explanation is overly simplistic, but so is "He's undermining the President".  The reality is a lot more complex.

This is Booker's first major Israel vote as a Senator, and like it or not, Democrat or not, a Senator from New York or New Jersey in post-9/11 America is going to take the hard line again Iran, even if he's a dove like Booker.  This is as much a regional political reality as Jay Rockefeller being nice to King Coal, Mary Landreiu and Mark Begich being nice to offshore drilling, and Harry Reid (or Booker himself now) respecting the casino gaming industry.

Secondly, I have a problem calling Cory Booker specifically out over this.  Why not the other Senate Dems backing this bill, including Schumer, Gillibrand, and Menendez?  No offense, but if the issue is bowing to AIPAC, Schumer and Menendez in particular have a hell of a lot more to answer for.  Booker just got to the Senate...and he never would have if he didn't toe this particular line.

Cooper ends with this:

The activist left has been disappointed by much of the Obama presidency, wrong-footed in the face of an austerian coalition between the center and an energized, reactionary right. But from New York to Los Angeles, there is clearly some new momentum on the left. If these Senate Dems manage to kill the Iran negotiations, or push us into yet another Middle East catastrophe, none of them will ever be president.

He's correct on that account. The activist left was disappointed in Obama from day one, of course. But I'm going to say that if Iran wanted to kill these negotiations, they'd find an excuse to do it, and hanging that on Cory Booker's neck is almost as bad as continuing to be disappointed in President Obama, who got this deal done in the first place.

I don't agree with it.  But that's how the game works.  You can either play the game and try to change it, or let the Republicans run it.  I'm going to go with the former.

A Supreme Amount Of Trouble

It looks like President Obama's power to make recess appointments is about to have some very strict limits placed on it by SCOTUS if Monday's oral arguments are anything to go by.  Lyle Denniston:

Seeming a bit troubled about allowing the Senate to have an on-off switch on the president’s power to temporarily fill vacant government posts, the Supreme Court on Monday indicated that it may yet allow just that. Even some of the Justices whose votes the government almost certainly needs to salvage an important presidential power were more than skeptical. 

A ninety-three-minute hearing on the Constitution’s grant of power to the president to make short-term appointments to fill vacancies was at times a somewhat anxious exploration of whether history or constitutional text should govern the extent of that power. On balance, text seemed to be winning out, and that appeared to favor the Senate more than the White House. 

Perhaps the most unfortunate moment for presidential authority was a comment by Justice Stephen G. Breyer that modern Senate-White House battles over nominations were a political problem, not a constitutional problem. Senators of both parties have used the Constitution’s recess appointment provisions to their own advantage in their “political fights,” Breyer said, but noted that he could not find anything in the history of the clause that would “allow the president to overcome Senate resistance” to nominees.

If Justice Breyer is openly saying that he can't find any reason for the President's power of recess appointments to not be limited to strictly the time between Congresses rather than whenever Congress isn't actively in session, then any recess appointments the President may wish to make will be limited to a few days every two years, the next window being in January 2015 and that's it.

Should the GOP get control of the Senate, nobody will get confirmed or appointed, and Republicans will be free to keep executive branch positions unfilled for two years.

And there won't be a thing the President will be able to do.

That should scare the hell out of you.

This particular battle looks to be over before it even began.

StupidiNews!

• Congressional leader from both parties say they've worked out an agreement to keep the government open through September 30th.
• Newly sworn-in Virginia Gov. Terry McAullife's first day on the job included an executive order protecting LGBT state employees from discrimination.
• In an effort to win back consumers after a massive credit card security breach over the holidays, retailer Target is turning to a new public relations campaign and security overhaul.
• Japanese distillery giant Suntory is looking to by Jim Beam Brands in order to get its hand on Maker's Mark and the US bourbon market in a reported $16 billion deal.
• Codenamed "Threshhold", Microsoft's Windows 9 could be hitting store shelves as early as April 2015 as the software maker zeroes in on Google and Apple.

Last Call To Sink The GOP

Alex Sink, that is.  And Florida's special election for the vacant seat of the late Republican Rep. Bill Young could very well go to the Democrats in March.

More than a dozen operatives and officials from both parties interviewed by POLITICO were almost unanimous that Democrat Alex Sink, her party’s 2010 nominee for Florida governor, has emerged as the unambiguous favorite in the race. The primary, in which Sink has run unopposed as a group of Republicans have slugged it out, is on Tuesday. The general election is on March 11. 

Democrats need to gain 17 seats to win the House majority in November. An early win in Florida would give the party ammunition to argue they‘re in for a better year than political handicappers expect. A loss, on the other hand, would be widely seen as a serious blow: On Thursday, political analyst Stu Rothenberg penned a piece in Roll Call titled, “The Race Democrats Can’t Afford to Lose.” 

Republicans admit they are increasingly alarmed about the prospect of losing the St. Petersburg-area district. Democrats, after enduring a heartbreaking loss in a 2013 South Carolina special election they thought was theirs, are carefully managing expectations but can smell victory.

We need all the D's who can win that we can get, and this is a seat we can win.

Among Republicans there is unhappiness with the candidates in Tuesday’s GOP primary and disappointment that many of the party’s best and brightest who long had been thought of as successors to Young didn’t run. 

David Jolly, who’s seen as the favorite to get the GOP nod, is a Washington lobbyist — a profession that leaves him vulnerable to being portrayed as a hired gun and insider. State Rep. Kathleen Peters began the race with plenty of promise, winning endorsements from a group of House GOP women eager to expand their ranks. But some Republicans believe her campaign has fizzled, with the candidate scoring low in recent polls. Mark Bircher, a little-known Iraq War veteran, has struggled to raise money.

Or maybe the problem is the GOP brand has been so tarnished by extremist nutcases like Allen West and Rick Scott that Florida is tired of electing them.  Go figure.

We'll keep an eye on this race in March.

The Villagers' Role In The Boss Fantasy

Expanding more on my last post, the entire GOP fantasy involving Chris Christie centers around the fact his dishonest and mean behavior as Governor of New Jersey made him "authentic" and "a strong leader".  Now that the wheels are coming off the Christie bandwagon, we get pieces like this from WIN THE MORNING Magazine: "15 Chris Christie Controversies You Missed"

Democrats in New Jersey have been celebrating what you might call Chris Christiemas this week. When documents were released strongly suggesting that senior members of Governor Christie’s staff were behind the George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, the Gov’s ideological opponents breathed a sigh of relief. Christie’s unrivaled political skill and, as Matt Katz outlined here in November, ability to drive a narrative of his choosing, have meant that until now, The Story of Chris Christie As Told By The National Media is one that Christie has largely written himself. As one New Jersey Democratic strategist told me, “the press had basically inaugurated him already.” But Christie’s political career has been riddled with controversies big and small, most of which have been paid little attention by those outside the Garden State. And while perhaps none of these kerfuffles placed anyone in imminent danger quite like Bridgegate did, at least a few of them might have spelled the end of another, less media savvy politician’s career.

And yet Politico was one of those very "national media" outlets that the Democrats in New Jersey are rightfully complaining about, pretending they had no idea why anyone would find fault in the Villagers' love of the man.

Their mendacious lack of awareness (bordering on being a three-year-old with chocolate stains on his face who is asked what happened to the chocolate chip cookies on the table, responds "I don't know!") is equaled only by the mendacity of the same level in the Christie camp's response to the bridge scandal.

Keep in mind Christie never had a chance in 2016, anyway.  There's a reason why Romney passed him over.

The Bridge Over Troubled Christie Is Now On Fire

After years of propping the him up as "authentic" and "bipartisan" suddenly the Villagers are asking questions about why GOP NJ Gov. Chris Christie may not be so honest.

Just days after dismissing two top advisers for their roles in the George Washington Bridge scandal, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is facing questions over the use of Superstorm Sandy relief funds. 

CNN has learned that federal officials are investigating whether Christie improperly used those relief funds to produce tourism ads that starred him and his family. 

The news couldn't come at a worse time for the scandal-plagued Republican, who is facing two probes into whether his staff tied up traffic near the country's busiest bridge to punish a Democratic mayor who refused to endorse his successful re-election bid. 

If the Sandy inquiry finds any wrongdoing, it could prove even more damaging to Christie's national ambitions. His performance during and after the superstorm has been widely praised and is a fundamental part of his straight-shooting political brand. 

In the new probe, federal auditors will examine New Jersey's use of $25 million in Sandy relief funds for a marketing campaign to promote tourism at the Jersey Shore after Sandy decimated the state's coastline in late 2012, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone told CNN.

All the local shenanigans that supporters dismissed about the guy as "non-issues" are suddenly real problems in his now "scandal-plagued" administration.  It's funny now that Christie's brand is permanently damaged how all of a sudden this stuff demands closer inspection.  People are shocked that Christie would do anything to turn his response to Hurricane Sandy into political gold, even possibly break the law?

Now why would Christie risk his image like that?  Oh yes, a year ago, he was THE BOSS.  Now he's just in trouble.

Lots of trouble.

StupidiNews!

• France's first lady, Valerie Trierwieler, has been been hospitalized following allegations French President Francois Hollande has been having an affair.
• A federal judge has ruled that a flea market painting that turned out to be a stolen Renoir artwork has to be returned to the Baltimore Museum of Art, where it was taken from 60 years ago.
• The US State Department has issued a travel warning for the Sochi Olympics, advising Americans to be careful of possible terror attacks.
• Defense contractor Honeywell is under investigation for producing avionics parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in China before moving production to the US.
• A year after the suicide of internet activist Aaron Swartz, hacker group Anonymous hit the website of Swartz's former university, MIT.

Iran Into A Heck Of A Deal

Looks like the tentative deal with the P5+1 nations (The five permanent members of the UN security Council, the US, Russia, France, the UK and China, plus Germany) and Iran announced last November is now going forward as a real framework for peace starting January 20th.

Iran and six world powers have agreed on how to put in place an accord that would temporarily freeze much of Iran’s nuclear program, American and Iranian officials said on Sunday. 

That accord would go into effect on Jan. 20. 

International negotiators worked out an agreement in November to constrain much of Iran’s program for six months so that diplomats would have time to pursue a more comprehensive follow-up accord. 

But before the temporary agreement could take effect, negotiators had to work out the technical procedures for carrying it out and resolve some of its ambiguities in concert with the International Atomic Energy Agency. 

Under the interim agreement, Iran would stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent, a level that would be sufficient for energy production but that would require further enrichment for making bombs. 

Iran’s stockpile of uranium enriched to 20 percent would be diluted or converted to oxide so that it could not be readily used for military purposes.

So the interim deal is in place and is moving forward.  Now, the real work of a lasting deal with Iran will begin.

Republicans of course are already screaming bloody murder.

Long Time Coming For Leading Ladies

As Buzzfeed writer Adam Vary points out, The Hunger Games sequel, Catching Fire, became the #1 box office movie of 2013 finally surpassing Iron Man 3.  I enjoyed the film myself and thought it was a stronger movie than the first, and Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen is simply amazing.

There's another more notable reason for the film's box office take:

Remarkable stat: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the first movie with a solo female lead to be the year's #1 film since The Exorcist.
— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) January 10, 2014

To be fair, since The Exorcist opened in 1973, there have been films featuring women in arguably lead roles that have topped the domestic box office for the year: 2011’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 and 2001’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone both starred Emma Watson; 2009’s Avatar starred Zoe Saldana; 1997’s Titanic starred Kate Winslet; and 1978’s Grease starred Olivia Newton-John. But all of those movies also featured a male actor either as a co-lead or the film’s main protagonist (respectively, Daniel Radcliffe, Sam Worthington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and John Travolta). 

Jennifer Lawrence, by contrast, is inarguably the sole protagonist of Catching Fire. Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, and Sam Claflin fill in the main supporting roles, but we do not track their emotional story in the movie. We only track Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen. 

In truth, The Exorcist just barely qualifies as a film with a solo female protagonist. The Oscar-winning horror film starts off following Chris MacNeil’s (Ellen Burstyn) terror at the deteriorating health of her young daughter Regan (Linda Blair). But the second half of the film essentially drops Burstyn’s role as two priests played by Max von Sydow and Jason Miller perform the titular exorcism on Regan. 

If you want to find a No. 1 movie with a woman as the clear, unambiguous lead, you’ve got to go back to 1968’s Funny Girl, starring Barbra Streisand as groundbreaking comedienne Fanny Brice. (Omar Sharif plays Brice’s first husband Nicky Arnstein, and though the film tracks the arc of their relationship, it does so from Brice’s point of view.)

So it's been 40 (or 45, depending on your view) years since a #1 box office movie in the US had a solo female lead as the star.

That's a devastating indictment of Hollywood, frankly.  And more power to Jennifer Lawrence with her upcoming films.

More Breaches Of Trust

Meanwhile, the credit card information breach announced by Target earlier this month is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to compromised credit info during the holidays last year.

Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed. 

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year. 

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate. They also said that while they suspect the perpetrators may be the same as those who launched the Target attack, they cannot be sure because they are still trying to find the culprits behind all of the security breaches. 

Law enforcement sources have said they suspect the ring leaders are from Eastern Europe, which is where most big cyber crime cases have been hatched over the past decade.

This is the kind of thing that worries me most about information security and privacy.  Having been a victim of identity theft in the past and all I had to go through in order to get my information back in proper order, I'm far more worried about sloppy corporate abuses and data thieves actively making my life miserable than I am the federal government in theory.

You also have to wonder about Republicans yelling that we don't need anything like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau either because government is baaaaaaaaad.

It's not government that's screwing up here, folks.

The Kroog Talks Kentucky

Paul Krugman talks about Owsley County, Kentucky to be precise.

National Review has an actually interesting report by Kevin Williamson on the state of Appalachia, providing a valuable portrait of the region’s woes — plus an account of how people turn food stamps fungible by converting them into soda. But the piece also has a moral: the big problem, it argues, is the way government aid creates dependency. It’s the Paul Ryan notion of the safety net as a “hammock” that makes life too easy for the poor.
But do the facts about Appalachia actually support this view? No, they don’t. Indeed, even the facts presented in the article don’t support it. 

Williamson dismisses suggestions that economic factors might be driving social collapse:

If you go looking for the catastrophe that laid this area low, you’ll eventually discover a terrifying story: Nothing happened. 

But he almost immediately contradicts himself, noting that employment in eastern Kentucky has fallen with the decline of coal and what little manufacturing the area once had. True, there was no sudden moment when the town’s main employer closed up shop; it was a gradual process. But so what? The underlying story of Appalachia is in fact one of declining opportunity. Here’s the unemployment rate for Owsley county:

Is it any surprise that people have turned to food stamps?

Reminder:  the vast majority of Americans who recieve SNAP benefits and unemployment benefits, like nearly all forms of social assistance, are white.  It's folks in places like Owsley County who are poor, not just "inner city Detroit" and whatnot.

But hey, FOX News convinces folks to vote against this stuff, then blame "those people" when things keep getting worse.

Jumping Off That Bridge Too Far

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie is toast.

He told everyone at his long, bizarre, rambling press conference on Thursday that he hadn't heard anything about the Fort Lee bridge closures until that day.

He lied.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie complained in a phone call with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that a Port Authority official has been wading too deeply into controversial and potentially politically explosive lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, according to a report Thursday. 

The issue involves bridge toll lanes in Fort Lee, N.J., that were cut from three to one in September, causing a massive traffic backups.

That article was from December 12 of last year, a month ago.

So why would he need to talk to Gov. Cuomo about this if there was nothing wrong, and nothing to cover up when the Port Authority was investigating why the closures happened?

Toast.

Stupidinews, Weekend Edition!

• New Jersey legislators released some 2,000 pages of documents related to GOP Gov. Chris Christie's staff and the closure of lanes on the George Washington Bridge for possible political reasons.
• Diplomatic ties between India and the US are strained after the arrest of an Indian diplomat and Indian retaliation by asking the US to remove an individual from the embassy at New Delhi.
• The first permanent detainee case to come before President Obama's new parole review board at Guantanamo has been cleared for prisoner transfer out of the facility.
• A New Jersey man has been arrested for allegedly trying to smuggle F35 Joint Strike fighter plane plans to Iran.
• A new UK startup is offering "vault storage" of Bitcoins, backed by Llloyd's of London, as a new service to Bitcoin holders.

Last Call For High-Way Robbery

Nothing I can say can improve on this tweet.

People kept stealing the 420 mile marker in Colorado. This was CDOT's solution. pic.twitter.com/xDsZkTe0Fv
— StuffJournalistsLike (@JournalistsLike) January 10, 2014

Never change, Colorado.