Last Call For Bridge Trolls

Gov. Chris Christie, please pick up the white courtesy phone.  Your last shot at the White House 2016 is calling and may be a bit delayed in arrival.

The Port Authority official who oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge said he informed Gov. Chris Christie about it at a Sept. 11 memorial while the closings were occurring, according to the findings of an internal investigation released by lawyers for the governor on Thursday.

The official, David Wildstein, told Mr. Christie’s press secretary, Michael Drewniak, of the Sept. 11 conversation at a dinner in December just before his resignation from the Port Authority, according to the report.

The report said that Mr. Christie did not recall any such conversation, and it found no evidence that he was involved in the scheme, which snarled traffic for thousands of commuters in Fort Lee, N.J., from Sept. 9 through the morning of Sept. 12.

In other words, Christie is now dumping everything on his aides and playing dumb as his official position.  Oh and his own investigation says he's innocent.  Sure he is.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said today that former aides were "inexplicably stupid" when they allegedly shut down lanes of busy George Washington Bridge and flooded a New Jersey town with traffic.

The exclusive interview with ABC News' Diane Sawyer was his first television interview since his January press conference on the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.

"When things were first reported, I said: 'This can't possibly be true. Because who would do something like that?'" Christie told Sawyer. "Sometimes, people do inexplicably stupid things."

Good luck sticking with that story, Chris.  You're going to need it.

I'm Surprised It Took This Long

Tommy Christopher points out this ugly steamrolling of Chris Hayes by Koch Brothers goon Jennifer Stefano.  She's all smiles at the beginning, and Chris Hayes of course tries his earnest best to be above the fray as the topic is Obamacare.  Five minutes later, Hayes is visibly stunned by the amount of pure bullshit Stefano has spewed on his show and he's clearly not sure what to do about it.



By the end Stefano is all but calling Hayes a woman-hating criminal.  He's had Stefano on his show before, but he's shocked that Stefano is ripping into him personally.  I'm sure he saw her as a friend up until this point, because the whole purpose of Chris Hayes's show is to have a decent discussion on the topics of the day's news.

The poor naive little lamb.

News flash, Chris:  Conservatives from Americans for Prosperity are not there to be your friend.  They are there to kick you in the head and spout as many lies per minute as they can about President Obama and his policies.  They are there to do exactly what Stefano did to you, that is use you like a punching bag and pummel you on your own show.  They are daring you to devolve into a screaming match, because lord knows if your goal is to try to inform your viewers about the Affordable Care Act, her job is to stop you from doing that, and she did exactly that.

The lesson you're supposed to draw from this is that conservatives from think tanks are not your friends, Chris.  They are your tormentors.

Maybe you should stop inviting them on your show?

Meanwhile, In Ukraine...

Russian troops continue to mass on the border with Eastern Ukraine as there appears to be no diplomatic solution in sight to Crimea.

U.S. and European security agencies estimate Russia has deployed military and militia units totaling more than 30,000 people along its border with eastern Ukraine, according to U.S. and European sources familiar with official reporting.

The current estimates represent what officials on both sides of the Atlantic describe as a continuing influx of Russian forces along the Ukraine frontier, the sources said.

The 30,000 figure represents a significant increase from a figure of 20,000 Russian troops along the border that was widely reported in U.S. and European media last week.

But U.S. and European security sources noted that these estimates are imprecise. Some estimates put current troop levels as high as 35,000 while others still suggest a level of 25,000, the sources said.

That's not the bad part.  The bad part is we don't know what they are up to, thanks to that sudden NSA blind spot of ours that developed in the last month or so.

U.S. officials said that what Russian President Vladimir Putin actually plans to do with his forces deployed on the Ukraine border is unknown. Some officials say intelligence information available to policymakers regarding what Putin is thinking, and what he is saying to his advisors and military commanders, is fragmentary to non-existent.

But the portents are potentially ominous. "No one's ruling out the possibility of additional Russian military aggression," one U.S. official said.

Crimea is one thing, but Eastern Ukraine is another.  Putin is playing with fire, and we're lacking the intel resources to see where he's going with this insanity.  An actual shooting war in Ukraine is not going to be good for anyone on Earth.

StupidiNews!

• In a major ruling the National Labor Relation Board has ruled that Northwestern University's football players are employees and can choose to form a union.
• Two Boston firefighters were killed and 17 people were injured in a nine-alarm apartment building fire in the Back Bay neighborhood.
• Bank of America will pay $9.3 billion to settle mortgage bond issues stemming from the financial crisis of 2008.
• Ukraine is on the verge of finalizing a deal with the International Monetary Fund for $15-$20 billion in aid loans.
• Sen. Joe Manchin is backing off his former stance to create legislation to ban Bitcoin as criticism of the plan has been harsh from both Silicon Valley and the IRS.

Last Call For Kick Started, Kicked Out

Barry Ritholtz makes a very important observation: this week's announcement that Oculus, the Kickstarter funded company making virtual 3-D gaming glasses technology that got bought for $2 billion by Facebook, proves that everything critics had to say about the deregulation of crowdsource funding in 2012's JOBS Act (including myself) was 100% accurate.

With Facebook acquiring virtual-reality company Oculus, one of the all time great sucker plays -- the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act,” signed by President Barack Obama on April 1, 2012 -- has been revealed as the massive bait-and-switch it is. (The JOBS Act? Hows that for a misleading title?)

It is relatively uncommon for the chairperson of the SEC to object to new deregulation, but when new laws are thought to be anti-investor, it's no surprise. Regardless of strenuous objections, the JOBS Act became law, making it all-too-easy for companies to raise money. It was more of the same radical deregulation that helped cause the financial crisis. This was not about making markets work more smoothly, but rather, an extreme form of “smash & grab” capitalism.

Bill Black called it a “recipe for fraud.” But Professor Black was wrong -- it's not a fraud, it’s a scam. You see, fraud involves something where there is a violation of the law; no rules appear to have been broken here. This is how the JOBS Act is supposed to work: Let people make dumb decisions on their own, without any protection.

A scam on the other hand, is when people are legally duped out of their money. When the auto dealer offers you “rust-proofing,” it’s a scam. When a retail stockbroker offers you entry into a special purpose acquisition company, it’s a scam. Ordering something from a late-night infomercial -- Order now, and get a 2nd one free, you just pay shipping & handling! -- is a scam. These are legal ways to separate fools from their money.

And who got scammed?  Why, the Kickstarter backers, of course.

What did the KickStarter funders of Oculus get? Note I use "funder" and not "investor," because investors have a potential for an investment return. These funders, who backed the company three months after the JOBS Act passed, did not. As the Journal noted, they were promised “a sincere thank you from the Oculus team.” And, for $25, a T-shirt. For $300, the dangle of “an early developer kit” including a prototype headset. Total money raised: $2.4 million from 9,500 contributors.

Which just got turned into $2 billion.  The Kickstarter folks get a t-shirt for seeing their investment multiplied a thousand-fold.

And from a legal standpoint, thanks to the deregulation in the JOBS Act that the GOP created, they don't even have to cough up the damn t-shirt.  Legally, they get nothing.

Working as intended.  Have you contributed to any startups through Kickstarter or any other crowdsourced avenue since the JOBS Act became law?

Might want to reconsider in the future.  Very much so.

Charlotte Mayor Patrick Cannon Arrested On Federal Corruption Charges

Wow, Patrick Cannon didn't even make it through his first year as Mayor of Charlotte before getting arrested on bribery and corruption charges.  And yes, he's a Democrat.  There are bad politicians who are Democrats just as there are bad politicians who are Republicans.

The mayor of Charlotte was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigations on Wednesday on charges that he violated federal public corruption laws.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court, Patrick DeAngelo Cannon was charged with theft and bribery concerning programs receiving federal funds, honest services wire fraud and extortion under color of official right.

According to court documents, during the course of a separate criminal investigation, the FBI received reliable information that Cannon, a Democrat, was potentially involved in illegal activities associated with his position as an elected official, and began an undercover investigation in or about August 2010.

The complaint and affidavit allege that during the course of that investigation, Cannon allegedly solicited and accepted money bribes and things of value from undercover FBI agents, posing as commercial real estate developers and investors wishing to do business in Charlotte.

According to the documents, Cannon solicited and accepted bribes and items of value in exchange for the use of his official position as Charlotte Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and/or as a City Council Member.

The complaint and law enforcement affidavit allege that Cannon accepted the bribes from the undercover FBI agents on five separate occasions.

On the last occasion, on February 21, Cannon allegedly accepted $20,000 in cash in the Mayor's office.

According to the complaint and the affidavit, between January 2013 and February 2014, Cannon allegedly accepted from the undercover agents over $48,000 in cash, airline tickets, a hotel room, and use of a luxury apartment in exchange for the use of his official position.

The big question of course is that Cannon was elected Mayor last just November, and the sting goes back his City Council days in 2010.  He's been under investigation for nearly four years.  Cannon certainly would have lost to Republican Edwin Peacock for Mayor if he had been arrested six months ago after Mayor Anthony Foxx went on to become US Transportation Secretary.  Of course, he would have lost in the primaries to City Councilman James Mitchell too, so.

So why now?  The bulk of this stuff happened before he was Mayor.  Cannon also owned the largest private parking company in Charlotte, E-Z Parking, and you can imagine the kind of nonsense that went on there in deals between the company and the city.

Republicans are calling on Cannon to resign immediately.

Also, dammit Democrats.  Stop this.  You're better than this.

Jurist Prudence

If there was a moment in yesterday's Supreme Court oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby case where things got weird, convoluted, and political, it was when Justice Elena Kagan quoted Justice Antonin Scalia's own arguments from 1990 on why your boss's religious views should not affect employees:

During oral arguments Tuesday about the validity of Obamacare's birth control mandate, Justice Elena Kagan cleverly echoed Justice Antonin Scalia's past warning that religious-based exceptions to neutral laws could lead to "anarchy."

"Your understanding of this law, your interpretation of it, would essentially subject the entire U.S. Code to the highest test in constitutional law, to a compelling interest standard," she told Paul Clement, the lawyer arguing against the mandate for Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood. "So another employer comes in and that employer says, I have a religious objection to sex discrimination laws; and then another employer comes in, I have a religious objection to minimum wage laws; and then another, family leave; and then another, child labor laws. And all of that is subject to the exact same test which you say is this unbelievably high test, the compelling interest standard with the least restrictive alternative."

Kagan's remarks might sound familiar to the legally-trained ear. In a 1990 majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, Scalia alluded to the same examples of what might happen if religious entities are permitted to claim exemptions from generally applicable laws. He warned that "[a]ny society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy."

Of course, that was 24 years ago when the President was a Republican, so this time around those religious exceptions to a law a Democratic president signed into law are necessary, in Scalia's eyes.   But in 1990, he wisely wrote of "slippery slope" arguments.

"The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," Scalia wrote in the 6-3 opinion, "ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races."

In other words, if Hobby Lobby is allowed to except itself from Obamacare's mandate, what can't it except itself from?  That's the golden ticket..

StupidiNews!

• LA County Sheriff's Department investigators have concluded that "Fast & Furious" movie star Paul Walker was killed while driving too fast, at least 80 MPH in a 45 MPH zone.
• As expected, as US appeals court has extended the stay of same-sex marriages in Michigan pending the state's appeal over the unconstitutional finding of its ban on the practice.
• The death toll in Sunday's mudslide near Seattle is up to 14, with dozens still reported missing as search and rescue teams comb through the area.
• Senate majority leader Harry Reid has removed legislation from a Ukraine aid package boosting the International Monetary Fund opposed by the GOP in exchange for quick passage later this week.
• Minecraft developer Markus "Notch" Persson has canceled plans to bring the game to the Oculus Rift 3-D display system after the company's surprise acquisition by Facebook on Tuesday.

Last Call For One Hell Of A Coincidence

Business Insider writer Michael Kelley is asking the right questions here about our old friend Dudebro Defector and the NSA's sudden blind spot in Russia.

U.S. officials think that Russia recently obtained the ability to evade U.S. eavesdropping equipment while commandeering Crimea and amassing troops near Ukraine's border.

The revelation reportedly has the White House "very nervous," especially because it's unclear how the Kremlin hid its plans from the National Security Agency's snooping on digital and electronic communications.

One interesting fact involved is the presence of Edward Snowden in Russia, where he has been living since flying to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23.

In July, primary Snowden source Glenn Greenwald told The Associated Press that Snowden "is in possession of literally thousands of documents that contain very specific blueprints that would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it."

So it's either a crazy coincidence that the Russians figured out how to evade NSA surveillance while hosting the NSA-trained hacker, or else it implies that Snowden provided the Russians with access to the NSA's blueprint.

No doubt Kelley's article is going to draw a massive screed from Double G and the usual suspects.  But as the people who support Snowden's actions remind us, we need to have a serious debate about American intelligence capabilities, and that includes debating the consequences of someone with the vast knowledge of these capabilities defecting to a foreign country.

I've said on a number of occasions that the actions of Snowden and his partners are not consistent with the goal of reigning in the NSA through existing means, but very consistent with the goal of taking it upon themselves to irreparably damage our intelligence-gathering abilities as a lesson to the Unites States government.

The threats have been made that if anything happens to Snowden, the full trove of information would be leaked. 

It's a reasonable question to ask if that's already happened.

Honey Badger Mode Activated

Sen. Harry Reid came out swinging Monday afternoon as the US Senate returned to work, noting that recent Republican filibustering of a Russian sanctions bill may not only have not helped portray the US as weak, but actually contributed to the Russian invasion of Crimea.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Monday that Republicans may have helped Russia annex Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in a surprisingly sharp attack ahead of a test vote on a bill authorizing more U.S. sanctions on Russia and $1 billion in loan guarantees to Ukraine.

Outlining the Senate's agenda after a one-week recess, the Nevada Democrat said the first item would be the Ukraine bill that Republicans blocked just before lawmakers went on break. He urged Republicans to consider "how their obstruction affects United States' national security as well as the people of Ukraine" and said their delay of any congressional action "sent a dangerous message to Russian leaders."

"Since a few Republicans blocked these important sanctions last work period, Russian lawmakers voted to annex Crimea and Russian forces have taken over Ukrainian military bases," Reid said. "It's impossible to know whether events would have unfolded differently if the United States had responded to Russian aggression with a strong, unified voice."

Reid's charge comes despite widespread support among Republicans and Democrats in Congress for providing Ukraine with much-needed economic assistance and hitting Russian President Vladimir Putin's government with sanctions.

And GOP Senate aides noted the House has passed different legislation, meaning the Senate bill could not have become law before recess anyhow. They blamed Reid and Democrats for blocking the Senate from taking up the House legislation.

Nice to see the former Golden Gloves boxer actually throw a few punches for once instead of constantly taking Republican shots on the jaw.  Yes, Republicans did block Senate legislation on Ukraine sanctions, and it's good that somebody pointed this out.

It's Taxpayer-Funded School Creationism Time!

Pay attention class, because this is what the rapidly growing charter school movement is doing to US science education.

Taxpayers in 14 states will bankroll nearly $1 billion this year in tuition for private schools, including hundreds of religious schools that teach Earth is less than 10,000 years old, Adam and Eve strolled the garden with dinosaurs, and much of modern biology, geology and cosmology is a web of lies.

Now a major push to expand these voucher programs is under way from Alaska to New York, a development that seems certain to sharply increase the investment.

Public debate about science education tends to center on bills like one in Missouri, which would allow public school parents to pull their kids from science class whenever the topic of evolution comes up. But the more striking shift in public policy has flown largely under the radar, as a well-funded political campaign has pushed to open the spigot for tax dollars to flow to private schools. Among them are Bible-based schools that train students to reject and rebut the cornerstones of modern science.

I've talked before about Jeb Bush and his privatization mess in Florida, from his for-profit disaster relief scam to his own charter school nonsense (the number one reason why he can never be allowed in the White House) but this is already a reality in a third of America and that number is growing as cash-strapped states are turning to church cash to fund schools.  And of course, there's a catch:

Decades of litigation have established that public schools cannot teach creationism or intelligent design. But private schools receiving public subsidies can — and do. A POLITICO review of hundreds of pages of course outlines, textbooks and school websites found that many of these faith-based schools go beyond teaching the biblical story of the six days of creation as literal fact. Their course materials nurture disdain of the secular world, distrust of momentous discoveries and hostility toward mainstream scientists. They often distort basic facts about the scientific method — teaching, for instance, that theories such as evolution are by definition highly speculative because they haven’t been elevated to the status of “scientific law.”

And this approach isn’t confined to high school biology class; it is typically threaded through all grades and all subjects.

One set of books popular in Christian schools calls evolution “a wicked and vain philosophy.” Another derides “modern math theorists” who fail to view mathematics as absolute laws ordained by God. The publisher notes that its textbooks shun “modern” breakthroughs — even those, like set theory, developed back in the 19th century. Math teachers often set aside time each week — even in geometry and algebra — to explore numbers in the Bible. Students learn vocabulary with sentences like, “Many scientists today are Creationists.”

Awesome.  And it's only going to get worse.

Some 26 states are now considering enacting new voucher programs or expanding existing ones, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. One concept that is gaining popularity, on the table in eight states: setting up individual bank accounts stocked with state funds that parents can spend not just on tuition but also on tutors or textbooks, both secular and religious. On Friday, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled the approach constitutional; lawmakers there are already working to broaden eligibility.

Taxpayer money to buy creationist textbooks is just the tip of the iceberg.  We're setting up to produce a generation of FOX News viewers, fed from Kindergarten.

And they'll grow up to be FOX News voters, too.

StupidiNews!

• Russia has officially been kicked out of the G8 group of nations in response to Russia's annexation of Crimea.
• The White House is preparing new guidelines to curb much of the NSA's mass collection of metadata information.
• China is disputing and demanding evidence backing Malaysia's findings that lost Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing all 239 people aboard.
• Jurors in the trial of five Bernie Madoff aides reached guilty verdicts on all 31 counts of assisting the convicted fraudster in his $17.5 billion scam.
• Microsoft's purchase of phone maker Nokia won't be finalized until the end of next month as regulators in Asia are still inspecting the deal.

Last Call For Detective Christie

Good news everyone!  The hand-picked team of lawyers working for Chris Christie's office have found that Chris Christie is 100%, totally innocent of any wrongdoing in an incident stemming from Chris Christie having less than honest people in his office!

An internal review of the George Washington Bridge lane closures is reportedly set to be released, and the news on its face is good for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

The New York Times got advance word of the results of the review, which was conducted by high-priced lawyers at Christie's behest. The final tally: 70 interviews, at least $1 million in legal fees to be paid by taxpayers, and no evidence that the Republican governor was involved in the plotting or orchestrating of the lane closures.

I'm sure New Jersey taxpayers are thrilled!

The Times pointed out two caveats. For one, the firm that conducted the investigation, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, has known ties to the Christie administration. Second, the lawyers that conducted the investigation were unable to interview the three key players at the heart of the scandal: former Christie deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly, former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien, and former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive David Wildstein.

So after not asking the people who would actually know if Christie did anything wrong, Christie spent a million in taxpayer bucks to find out that he didn't do anything wrong.

Gosh, that should put an end to this entire circus, yes?

Even Cap'n Ed at Hot Air doesn't buy this crap (but he takes time to scream about Benghazi like the knee-jerk goon he is.)  Still, Christie seems to be getting increasingly bad at handling this scandal by the week.  How's he supposed to handle this at the White House level?

Meanwhile, In Ukraine...

After getting rolled all last week by Russian troops and losing several military bases, Ukraine announced that it is pulling military forces out of Crimea.

Ukraine announced the evacuation of its troops and their families from Crimea on Monday, effectively acknowledging defeat in the face of Russian forces, who stormed one of the last remaining Ukrainian bases on the peninsula.

Thousands of Ukrainian troops have been besieged on bases in Crimea, offering no armed resistance but refusing to surrender, since President Vladimir Putin declared Moscow's right to intervene at the start of the month.

Moscow formally annexed the region last week and its forces have been seizing the last Ukrainian bases in recent days.

"The National Defence and Security Council has instructed the Defence Ministry to carry out a re-deployment of military units in Crimea and evacuate their families," acting president Oleksander Turchinov told parliament in Kiev.

The move, he said, had been made following threats by Russian forces on the lives and health of Ukrainian service staff and their families.

Russian forces, using stun grenades and machine guns and backed by two helicopters, swept into a marine base in the port of Feodosia early on Monday, overrunning one of Ukraine's last symbols of resistance. Ukrainian officers were taken away for questioning, Ukrainian officials said.

An official withdrawal from the base was due to start at 3 p.m., Ukrainian military spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov said.

Effectively the military phase of this is now over.  The question is will more military phases come with more captured territory?  Ukraine's forces are routed, and Putin now has Crimea in name as well as in deed.

So what's next, and does anyone think Putin will stop here?

Classless Warfare

Check out this goofy ass NY Times op-ed on why people born in wealthy counties with high median incomes end up being notable.

Why do some parts of the country appear to be so much better at churning out American movers and shakers? I closely examined the top counties. It turns out that nearly all of them fit into one of two categories.

First, and this surprised me, many of these counties consisted largely of a sizable college town. Just about every time I saw a county that I had not heard of near the top of the list, like Washtenaw, Mich., I found out that it was dominated by a classic college town, in this case Ann Arbor, Mich. The counties graced by Madison, Wis.; Athens, Ga.; Columbia, Mo.; Berkeley, Calif.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Gainesville, Fla.; Lexington, Ky.; and Ithaca, N.Y., are all in the top 3 percent.

Why is this? Some of it is probably the gene pool: Sons and daughters of professors and graduate students tend to be smart. And, indeed, having more college graduates in an area is a strong predictor of the success of the people born there.

But there is most likely something more going on: early exposure to innovation. One of the fields where college towns are most successful in producing top dogs is music. A kid in a college town will be exposed to unique concerts, unusual radio stations and even record stores. College towns also incubate more than their expected share of notable businesspeople.

Could you tell this guy graduated from Harvard?  His name is Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, and apparently his degree is in Missing the Effing Obvious. Over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, Erik Loomis takes about 15 seconds to deconstruct this nonsense.

Or, it’s because you are born rich or you are born poor and that fact goes a very long ways in determining your future in this nation. Even his discussion of African-Americans and immigrants shows this–his examples are people born into the elites of these groups. It’s remarkable how obvious this is and how he totally misses this in a 21st century America where class-based analysis is unfashionable.

 It's not remarkable at all, he's a Harvard man!

All college jokes aside, it's still not remarkable for any recent college doctoral graduate to miss the forest for the trees like this, but rather rare for them to get NY Times op-eds while doing it.

StupidiNews!

• At least four are dead and 18 missing in a series of landslides in Washington State north of Seattle over the weekend.
• France's far right National Front party made major gains against the country's Socialist coalition in Sunday's local elections.
• NATO's top commander in Europe is warning that Russian aggression in Crimea may spread into neighboring Moldova.
• Chinese investors are calling for transparency in the country's trust and investment products as the government cracks down on "shadow banking".
• Apple wants to cut a deal with Comcast for preferential treatment for its new streaming service, but the deal faces regulatory hurdles until at least 2018.

Last Call For Rand 2016

Elias Isquith (who I don't always agree with) does get it right on why Rand Paul has no shot in 2016.

To recap, here’s the case for Rand Paul, millennial hero: He’s against surveillance and drone strikes, two issues on which the millennial vote is divided; he’s against comprehensive immigration reform and same-sex marriage, two things that millennial voters strongly support; he’s against big government and universal health care, two more things a majority of millennial voters back; and he likes to talk about getting people of color to vote for him, despite supporting voter suppression and the right of businesses to engage in race-based discrimination. Oh, and he’s comfortable telling the first black president, the one who “surrounds himself with Martin Luther King memorabilia in [the] Oval Office,” how he’s failing to live up to King’s legacy.

So can we stop with this nonsense now? Please?

It's very true that the youth vote won 2012 for President Obama, particularly in Virginia, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  It's also true that voting restrictions have been toughened in all four of these states.  President Obama won the under 30 vote in all four states by getting at least 60% or more, and that if Romney had split the youth vote 50-50 in those four states, he'd be President right now.

But in order to believe that Rand Paul has a legitimate shot of winning in 2016, you have to believe that there's a large enough Dudebro contingent to abandon the Dems entirely and that this group is  large enough to somehow erase Hillary's lead with women, and that Hillary will somehow manage to alienate voters of color more than Rand Paul.

The first is wishful thinking at best, but the second is patently ridiculous.

Hillary, Super Frenemy

Expect to see a lot of this over the next few years from Hillary Clinton:

During a forum at the Clinton Global Initiative University, Clinton fielded a question from Vrinda Agrawal, a student at the University of California, Berkeley who asked, "If you don't represent women in politics in America as a future president, who will?"

More than 1,000 students roared with approval and applauded while former President Bill Clinton smiled, whispered into TV host Jimmy Kimmel's ear and clapped along.

The former first lady said she appreciated the sentiment but was still deciding.

"I am very much concerned about the direction of our country and it's not just who runs for office but what they do when they get there and how we bring people together and particularly empower young people so we can tackle these hard decisions," Clinton said.

She worked for the guy in charge of that for four years as Secretary of State, but now she's "very much concerned about the direction of the country" and stuff.

Some quality shade throwing there.  As a professional politician and diplomat, she knows exactly how to walk that line between being an ally of our President (and the people who voted twice for him) and open "I told you so back in 2008" disrespect, running against him.

She's only getting started.  As such, new tag: With Frenemies Like This...

Nate Silver On The Senate

Nate Silver's first Senate forecast at his new digs is pretty sobering:  he sees easy GOP pickups of Democratic open seats in West Virginia and South Dakota (90%),  John Walsh losing badly in Montana (80%), Mitch McConnell easily keeping his seat here in Kentucky (75%) and the GOP keeping Georgia's open seat vacated by Saxby Chambliss (70%), Mark Pryor losing in Arkansas (70%) and at best, Mary Landrieu, Kay Hagan, Mark Begich and the open seat in Michigan as toss-ups.

That's four solid pickups for the GOP and four Dem seats that are tossups, plus Mark Udall in Colorado having only a 60% chance of winning.  That puts nine Dem seats in play where the GOP essentially has two outright, most likely has four and a very good shot at getting the six they need.

Martin Longman disagrees about Nate's West Virginia 90% GOP probability call:

Jay Rockefeller's seat in the Senate has been in Democratic hands for all but eight years since FDR's 1933 inauguration and was last held by a Republican in 1958, when John D. Hoblitzell, Jr. was appointed as a temporary replacement for Sen. Matthew Neely.

Joe Manchin's seat in the Senate was held by Robert Byrd for 51 years. Republican Henry Hatfield lost the seat in 1934, and the GOP has only controlled it briefly (November 7, 1956 – January 3, 1959) since that time.

What this says is that West Virginian's are simply not in the habit of electing Republicans to state-wide office, especially for high-profile races.

Yes, the state has changed over the last two decades, and it is remarkably hostile to our multiracial president. But, the same day that Obama was elected president, Joe Manchin was reelected as governor with 70% of the vote. Manchin was then elected to serve in the Senate twice, the second time earning over 60% of the vote on a ballot he shared with Obama. West Virginians also elected Democrat Earl Ray Tomblin to replace Manchin as governor that same election day.

To which I reply that here in Kentucky, we elected and then re-elected Democrat Steve Beshear to succeed Ernie Fletcher, the first Republican governor we had since 1971.  Fletcher's administration crashed and burned in scandal.

But we haven't had a Democratic senator since 1998 and Nate puts better odds of that happening than West Virginia.  Very similar states, Kentucky's registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 2 to 1, and yet Mitch will probably win by 15 points.  They hate Obama in West Virginia.  They hate him even more here in Kentucky.

Having said that, Nate's warning on that "enthusiasm gap" is real.

A tie on the generic ballot might not sound so bad for Democrats. But it’s a misleading signal, for two reasons. First, most of the generic ballot polls were conducted among registered voters. Those do not reflect the turnout advantage the GOP is likely to have in November. Especially in recent years, Democrats have come to rely on groups such as racial minorities and young voters that turn out much more reliably in presidential years than for the midterms. In 2010, the Republican turnout advantage amounted to the equivalent of 6 percentage points, meaning a tie on the generic ballot among registered voters translated into a six-point Republican lead among likely voters. The GOP’s edge hadn’t been quite that large in past years. But if the “enthusiasm gap” is as large this year as it was in 2010, Democrats will have a difficult time keeping the Senate.

If Dems don't show up in November, Republicans will control the Senate.

California Sleazin'

If you're wondering how and why the GOP has effectively walked completely away from California, the biggest electoral prize in the nation and home to one in seven US voters, it probably has something to do with the candidates they have.

One of four gubernatorial candidates introduced to California Republicans recently is a registered sex offender who spent more than a decade in state prison, convicted of crimes including voluntary manslaughter and assault with intent to commit rape.

Glenn Champ, 48, addressed hundreds of GOP delegates and supporters Sunday at the site of the state party's semi-annual convention. Introduced by party chairman Jim Brulte and allotted 10 minutes, Champ spoke in between the main GOP candidates, former U.S. Treasury official Neel Kashkari and state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of San Bernardino County.

Champ, a little-known political neophyte from the Fresno County community of Tollhouse, did not directly mention his criminal past during his speech but said, "In my life, I've been held accountable because of my stupidity. I do not want anyone else to be enslaved because of their lack of knowledge."

But he's a serious candidate.

Champ's rap sheet is lengthy. Court records show that in 1992, he pleaded guilty to carrying a concealed firearm. In 1993, he was convicted of two counts of assault with intent to commit rape and as a result was placed on the state's sex-offender registry.

In March 1998, he accepted a plea deal on a charge of loitering to solicit a prostitute; later that year, he pleaded no contest to a voluntary manslaughter charge after hitting a man with his vehicle, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in state prison, according to court records.

This guy is a violent criminal.  I understand he's served his time, but check out his version of remorse:

Champ said his life experience could help him deal with politicians in Sacramento. He calls them criminals, saying, for example, that they routinely infringe upon constitutionally protected gun rights.

"I know what the criminal mind thinks, and I know how it works and I know how to stop it, and that's something [other politicians] don't get," Champ said.

The convicted violent sex offender and rapist is the real victim here, because anyone who wants reasonable gun safety laws is the real criminal.  Please, Republicans, why would you not want to nominate this awesome human being for governor of California?  He stands for everything the Republican Party stands for, after all.