Last Call For The GOP Money Guys

The Country Club wing of the GOP has the Tea Party right where they want them, and that's fine with the money guys because they're sick and tired of the nutjob side of things interfering with the corporate takeover of America.

Banks are breathing a sigh of relief after established GOP incumbents bested a handful of Tea Party challengers at the polls recently.

Industry sources said the establishment wins improve Republican odds of retaking the Senate, which would in turn lead to a friendlier climate for the long-beleaguered sector. But some note that the Tea Party has left a mark on the Republican Party, presenting a challenging landscape for the industry.

The Tea Party movement can trace its roots back to fury about bailouts and banks, but the force that pulled the Republican Party right in recent years is finding less success at the polls recently.

In Idaho, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) was repeatedly blasted by outside groups for his 2008 vote in favor of the Wall Street rescue, but he soundly defeated his conservative challenger all the same.

Voters in Georgia, Oregon and Pennsylvania also opted for more mainstream candidates as opposed to conservative upstarts. And in Kentucky, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) trounced his primary challenger, Matt Bevin, who made McConnell’s vote in favor of the bailout a central plank of his campaign.

The recent shift away from feisty conservatives who are antagonistic toward Wall Street is a welcome development for a sector long in the political crosshairs of those at both ends of the political spectrum.

“The fact that [Sen.] Ted Cruz [R-Texas] will not have a whole lot of new allies is very encouraging,” said one senior financial industry executive.

Shutting down the government and screwing up the markets?  Not what the corporate types signed up for.  They run the GOP and they're more than happy to continue to do so.  If the Tea Party suckers vote for them too after losing in the primaries?  Let them.  It's all good with the money men who really run the place.

Who are the bankers scared of?  Democrats.

Banks are also watching election returns this year with one eye on a lawmaker who isn’t even on the ballot in 2014.

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) is not up for reelection until 2018, but he currently occupies the inside track to take over the Senate Banking Committee in the next Congress once Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) retires.

Brown is a frequent critic of Wall Street, and has advocated for tougher restrictions on the industry.

With more mainstream candidates on the general election ballot, financial industry advocates are hoping Senate power changes hands, and shifts that panel’s gavel away from Brown.

So what a surprise, the anti-banker bailout Tea Party saps are voting for the same guys that destroyed our economy again and again.  The bankers fear the Democrats however.

There's a lesson there.

The Damage Caused By Fragile Egos

Daily Banter editor Bob Cesca covers last week's Twitter e-peen slap fight between Double G and Julian Assange over who was the most ideologically pure when it came to "no more secrets".  Why should you care?  Because the end result is that people's lives are in danger.  Cesca:

It all began Monday morning when The Intercept posted a new Snowden revelation with the cutesy headline: “Data Pirates of the Caribbean: The NSA Is Recording Every Cell Phone Call in the Bahamas.” Get it? Pirates! The article exhaustively describes an operation called MYSTIC and another called SOMALGET in which NSA gathers audio and metadata of cellphone calls in the Bahamas in order to spy on human traffickers and drug cartels. The Bahamas is notorious for both.

Greenwald went on to inflate claims that this was all illegal spying, except at the very end where he admits SOMALGET is legal and the program cannot be used against US citizens, even in the Bahamas.  So yeah, standard Double G tactics.  But that's not the dangerous part:  Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stepped in because Double G didn't go far enough to harm the US.

The article refers to five nations where MYSTIC is used: the Bahamas, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines and nation that Greenwald redacted because, to quote the article, “The Intercept is not naming in response to specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence.”

The redaction didn’t sit well with Julian Assange, who is widely believed to operate the @wikileaks Twitter account.

Assange then threatened to reveal the 5th country, something that Greenwald wouldn't even do.  And sure enough on Thursday, Assange carried through on his threat.

We do not believe it is the place of media to “aid and abet” a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population.

Consequently WikiLeaks cannot be complicit in the censorship of victim state X. The country in question is Afghanistan.

The Intercept stated that the US government asserted that the publication of this name might lead to a ’rise in violence’. Such claims were also used by the administration of Barack Obama to refuse to release further photos of torture at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

And that's where we are.  President Obama is in Afghanistan today for a Memorial Day visit to our 32,000 troops and service personnel still there, and an NSA program in use in the area now will have to be scrapped because the bad guys now know the full details.

Both Greenwald and Assange have decided they are the people who get to determine what is a criminal act by the US government, and if they hurt Americans in the process, it doesn't really matter because as Americans, we're all complicit anyway and maybe we deserve it based upon what's being done in our name, because if we were as ideologically pure as these two arbiters of justice, we'd rise up against our government to stop them.  We haven't. so clearly we're just as guilty.

Therefore, some eggs will have to get broken.

So sayeth Assange, and to a lesser extent, Greenwald.

Once again, I question the motives of people who seem to be determined to do as much damage to our national security as possible.

Hawaii Ten Point Ten-Oh

With Gov. Neil Abercrombie's signature, Hawaii becomes the third blue state to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour.

The new law, approved overwhelmingly by Hawaii lawmakers in April, will raise Hawaii’s base wage in stages to reach $10.10 by January 2018 from a current level of $7.25, which is also the federal minimum.

“In today’s world that minimum wage is not a survival wage, certainly not in Hawaii,” Abercrombie said, referencing Hawaii’s high cost of living and rising housing prices.

Democrats headed by President Barack Obama have seized on the issue of raising the base wage of $7.25 as a way of stirring voter enthusiasm heading into mid-term elections in November.

Obama pushed Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 but has failed to win the backing of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Here's where's Hawaii Democrats are making the biggest difference in people's lives:

Much of the Hawaii wage debate centered on tips. Under the measure, employers of tipped workers making less than $17.10 per hour including tips would have to pay $10.10 per hour. For workers making more than $17.10 per hour, employers can deduct a $.75 tip credit from the hourly wage.

Under the $7.25 hourly rate, the tip credit is currently $.25 per hour for those workers making at least $7.75 an hour.

Considering Hawaii has just about the highest cost of living of any state, this is a long overdue change.  Good for Gov. Abercrombie and the Democrats who made this happen.

Last Call For Moon Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz is a joke, frankly.  But he's also a dangerous fanatic who will demagogue anything the Democrats do as the end of America.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) drew audible gasps Thursday when he told gathering of Christian conservatives that Democrats intended to amend the Constitution to limit free speech.

“When you think it can’t get any worse, it does,” Cruz warned at the Watchmen on the Wall gathering of pastors sponsored by the Family Research Council.

“This year, I’m sorry to tell you, the United States Senate is going to be voting on a constitutional amendment to repeal the First Amendment,” Cruz said, to the audible shock of the crowd.

What horrible bill could this possibly be?

The Tea Party-backed senator said Senate Democrats intend to vote this year on Senate Joint Resolution 19, which would effectively undo the unpopular U.S. Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing in the Citizens United and McCutcheon cases.

You mean the SCOTUS decisions that effectively allow plutocracy in America?  Why, those aren't dangerous at all!  But try to get the rich out of buying our elections, and well, you're repealing the First Amendment.

“I am telling you, I am not making this up,” Cruz said. “Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has announced the Senate Democrats are scheduling a vote on a constitutional amendment to give Congress the authority to regulate political speech, because elected officials have decided they don’t like it when the citizenry has the temerity to criticize what they’ve done.”

“They don’t like it when pastors in their community stand up and speak the truth,” he added.

And so Ted Cruz enlists the pastors in his war, because clearly our Founding Fathers meant the people with the most money to have the most influence on our election system.

Laugh all you want to at Cruz.  He's dangerous as hell.

No, Both Sides Don't Do It

President Obama took on the Villagers Thursday night at a fundraiser and tore into the "both sides do it" nonsense that somehow it's not the GOP blocking every piece of legislation that's causing nothing to come out of Washington.

“You’ll hear if you watch the nightly news or you read the newspapers that, well, there’s gridlock, Congress is broken, approval ratings for Congress are terrible. And there’s a tendency to say, a plague on both your houses. But the truth of the matter is that the problem in Congress is very specific. We have a group of folks in the Republican Party who have taken over who are so ideologically rigid, who are so committed to an economic theory that says if folks at the top do very well then everybody else is somehow going to do well; who deny the science of climate change; who don’t think making investments in early childhood education makes sense; who have repeatedly blocked raising a minimum wage so if you work full-time in this country you’re not living in poverty; who scoff at the notion that we might have a problem with women not getting paid for doing the same work that men are doing.

“They, so far, at least, have refused to budge on bipartisan legislation to fix our immigration system, despite the fact that every economist who’s looked at it says it’s going to improve our economy, cut our deficits, help spawn entrepreneurship, and alleviate great pain from millions of families all across the country.

“So the problem…is not that the Democrats are overly ideological — because the truth of the matter is, is that the Democrats in Congress have consistently been willing to compromise and reach out to the other side."

Why would Republicans want to work with Democrats to make America better when their entire base runs on hatred, anger, and fear?

“So when you hear a false equivalence that somehow, well, Congress is just broken, it’s not true. What’s broken right now is a Republican Party that repeatedly says no to proven, time-tested strategies to grow the economy, create more jobs, ensure fairness, open up opportunity to all people.”

Of course President Obama understands this.  Instinctively, Americans do too. A perfect example of this is the Warren Terrah and the Authorization of Use of Military Force declaration Congress made in 2001 for the war we've now been fighting for 13 years.  Both the AUMF and the terrorist detention facility at Gitmo remain ugly symbols of our permanent war, and they remain there because of Republicans.

You might want to keep in mind that Republicans keep passing bills specifically designed to prevent President Obama from being able to do things like close Gitmo.  That's why it's still open.  Period.

With An Iron Fist In A Velvet Minority Outreach Program

Keep up the good work chasing the votes of African-Americans like myself, Republicans like Newt Gingrich!

OH. BOY. @GingrichIdeas RT @BuzzFeedAndrew: @CNN pic.twitter.com/qqLyNaQjVl /
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) May 23, 2014

For the life of me, I just can't imagine why Republicans don't get 90% of the black vote.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Officials in Portland are asking nearly 700,000 residents to boil tap water due to fears of E coli bacteria in the water supply.
• Pope Francis arrives in Jordan today for the start of his Middle East trip that will include both Israel and the Palestinian territories.
• The US has suspended aid to Thailand after this week's military coup in Bangkok as the Thai army has removed and detained PM Yingluck Shinawatra.
• The S&P 500 Index closed at a record high, above the 1,900 mark for the first time as a jump in new home purchases in April rallied the markets.
• Hewlett-Packard will be cutting 16,000 more jobs in 2014, raising total cost-cutting measures this year to 50,000 layoffs.

Last Call For The Queen City, Uncrowned

The 2016 Republican National Convention will not be here in Cincinnati after all.

Cincinnati officials withdrew the city's bid to host the 2016 GOP convention because the U.S. Bank Arena does not meet the necessary specifications, the city's host committee announced on Thursday.

John Barrett, president and CEO of Western & Southern Financial Group and a leader of the effort to bring the convention to Cincinnati, said the Queen City was at a disadvantage in the GOP competition because of the arena.

"The site selection committee really liked what they saw here, but our arena is 40 years old," he told The Enquirer.

He said RNC officials gave Cincinnati leaders a 10-point list of items that would have to be improved or fixed at the arena for the city to remaining in the running—including doubling the number of box suites at the arena.

"We were able to do some of it but not all of it," Barrett said. "We're at a great disadvantage to these brand new modern arenas that have everything."

It's one thing to have a billionaire basketball or hockey team owner complain about the size of your arena, entirely another to have the GOP complain about it.  Maybe the problem is, oh, I dunno, Cincinnati doesn't have a major league hockey team like Columbus or NBA team like Cleveland. 

Considering no Republican has ever won the White House without carrying Ohio, scrapping one of the two remaining Ohio cities made some sense.  I just figured it would be Cleveland out.

Oh well.  It's not like I was looking forward to even more GOP jackasses around the city than normal.

Even More Republican Sneak Attacks

The long, strange story of winger blogger Clayton Kelly, his scheme to try to damage Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran in June's primary in order to support Tea Party primary challenger state Sen Chris McDaniel, and the Cochran camp's bizarre two-week delay sitting on the story just got a whole lot more weird as more arrests have been made, including a top state Tea Party official.

Two more arrests have been made in connection with the photographing of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) wife, Rose, who is patient in a Madison County nursing home.

Mark Mayfield, a member of the board of directors for the Central Mississippi Tea Party, was arrested Thursday, according to the Clarion Ledger of Mississippi. The second suspect arrested has not been identified. 

Clayton Kelly was arrested Friday and faces felony charges of photographing or filming another without permission where there is expectation of privacy and exploitation of a vulnerable adult, which carries up to a 10-year sentence. Kelly wanted to use the photograph of Cochran's wife in an anti-Cochran video.

Kelly supports state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Cochran's tea party primary challenger. Mayfield appears to be a McDaniel supporter as well and, according to the Clarion Ledger's Sam Hall, contributed $500 to McDaniel and served as an active volunteer on his campaign. 

Authorities claim Kelly photographed Rose Cochran at St. Catherine's nursing home in Madison, where she is bedridden and suffering from progressive dementia. Kelly, a political blogger and McDaniel supporter, allegedly used the photo in a video he posted online.

Since of course McDaniel is a freedom-loving responsible adult and a stalwart conservative Republican, he's dumping the blame for all this on Cochran and the liberal media "victimizing" him.

Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) is pushing an open letter he sent to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) vowing not to engage either his campaign or the "liberal media in their absurd witch hunt." 

"No matter how many press releases your campaign puts out, I will simply not stoop to your level. Win or lose, I’d like to be able to wake up on June 4th and be proud of the primary campaign I ran on behalf of Mississippi," McDaniel wrote in the open letter to the incumbent senator, who McDaniel is challenging.

The letter, which the McDaniel campaign first released on Wednesday and has been sending out to supporters on Thursday, refers to criticism by the Cochran campaign toward McDaniel in response to pro-McDaniel blogger Clayton Thomas Kelly being arrested for photographing Cochran's bedridden wife at her nursing home for an anti-Cochran video. 

"Over the past several weeks, your campaign has resorted to shameful slander, even going so far as to call me a 'criminal' without a shred of evidence to back up these accusations," McDaniel also said in the open letter. 

"No doubt, many political campaigns resort to juvenile behavior when they are down in the polls, but this kind of slander goes beyond childish pranks. It is, frankly, an embarrassment to our great state. Mississippi deserves better than this."

It's all a plot by Thad Cochran working with Obama to smear me because ARGLE BARGLE CONSPIRACY TINFOIL I EAT MY OWN POO.

But odds are one of these clowns is going to end up a US senator in January.  Awesome.

Grimes Goes Goofy

Alison Lundergan Grimes remains infinitely preferable to Mitch The Turtle, but she's not acquitting herslef well when it comes to political moves.  Given Kentucky's healthcare exchange, Kynect, is arguably the best in the nation right now and easy to defend for that reason, she's ducking on the Affordable Care Act.

Asked two times whether she'd have voted for the 2010 overhaul, the Kentucky Democrat who is challenging Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told The Associated Press: "I, when we are in the United States Senate, will work to fix the Affordable Care Act." 

Grimes added: "I believe the politically motivated response you continue to see from Mitch McConnell in terms of repeal, root and branch, is not in reality or keeping ... with what the facts are here in Kentucky." 

The law Republicans call "Obamacare" presents a delicate issue for Grimes, who won the Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday. Kynect, Kentucky's state-run health insurance exchange made possible by the law, is wildly popular. More than 400,000 people have either signed up for an expanded Medicaid program or purchased private insurance plans with the help of government subsidies. But Obamacare remains unpopular in the state, mostly because President Barack Obama himself is unpopular here.

Real simple:  "Yes, because Kynect proves that the parts of the law that are working can make a difference in improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Kentuckians.  We need to make sure every state has as good of an exchance as Kentucky does.  We're leading the way and we need to make the ACA better."

And then given the fact that her opponent filibustered a bill to fix the VA, she should have a fat, juicy fastball over the plate to smash past the fences.  Instead she fouls one off by going after VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Kentucky's Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes on Thursday called on Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign over the growing scandal involving the deaths of dozens of veterans while waiting for treatment.

Her campaign put out a brief statement titled, "Grimes Calls For Veterans Affairs Secretary Resignation" in which she says: "We owe a solemn obligation to our veterans, and our government defaulted on that contract. I don't see how that breach of trust with our veterans can be repaired if the current leadership stays in place."

Also real simple:  "Mitch McConnell and 40 other Republicans blocked a Senate bill in February that would have addressed the very problems we've seen for years in the VA system.  Instead, Mitch McConnell gladly authorized trillions to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he then told our veterans that we suddenly had no money to keep America's promises to them.  The real problem here is the GOP Senate caucus that Mitch McConnell leads and they should be ashamed.  When they had the opportunity to help fix this problem, they did nothing instead."

This is the Alison Grimes we need more of.



The brilliant person who gave this speech Tuesday night after she won?  This is the person I want as my next Senator.  The person who less than 24 hours later called on Shinseki to resign? 

Not so much.

StupidiNews!

• Protests continue in Salinas, California after the third incident of police fatally shooting a Latino man since March.
• The IRS will delay and rewrite new guidelines for tax-exempt social welfare groups, a move that has Republicans claiming victory.
• Thailand's army chief, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, is now governing the country after the military seized power from ousted PM Yingluck Shinawatra earlier this week.
• The House has passed legislation to curb the powers of the NSA, but the bill is opposed by tech giants who say the bill has major loopholes.
• NYC's Department of Health is following up on bad Yelp reviews to investigate restaurants that are violating health codes.

Last Call For Reparation Nation

In an Atlantic article that will be misinterpreted vilified, and unread by everyone who actually needs to read it, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for American reparations to African-Americans and Rep. John Conyers's bill to study what would be necessary in order to make such a move, a bill that of course lies rotting in the GOP-controlled House and will do so for arguably the rest of my lifetime.

Scholars have long discussed methods by which America might make reparations to those on whose labor and exclusion the country was built. In the 1970s, the Yale Law professor Boris Bittker argued in The Case for Black Reparations that a rough price tag for reparations could be determined by multiplying the number of African Americans in the population by the difference in white and black per capita income. That number—$34 billion in 1973, when Bittker wrote his book—could be added to a reparations program each year for a decade or two. Today Charles Ogletree, the Harvard Law School professor, argues for something broader: a program of job training and public works that takes racial justice as its mission but includes the poor of all races. 

To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting America’s origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte. 

Perhaps no statistic better illustrates the enduring legacy of our country’s shameful history of treating black people as sub-citizens, sub-Americans, and sub-humans than the wealth gap. Reparations would seek to close this chasm. But as surely as the creation of the wealth gap required the cooperation of every aspect of the society, bridging it will require the same.

Perhaps after a serious discussion and debate—the kind that HR 40 proposes—we may find that the country can never fully repay African Americans. But we stand to discover much about ourselves in such a discussion—and that is perhaps what scares us. The idea of reparations is frightening not simply because we might lack the ability to pay. The idea of reparations threatens something much deeper—America’s heritage, history, and standing in the world.

This is a long and significant read, I've been poring over it for the better part of a day now, just to try to find an agreeable synopsis above.  Do yourself a favor and take the time to read the entire thing.

I'll have more on this over the weekend when I've had more time to digest it.

Time To Get Our Veterans' Affairs In Order

Reminder to all Republicans screaming about how the Obama administration failed our veterans with substandard care and waiting lists:  Republicans blocked a $27 billion bill in February that would have overhauled the VA system when they weren't allowed to play politics and add Iran sanctions to the legislation.

With Democrats pressing for passage this week, Senate Republicans, backed by their leader, Mitch McConnell, attempted to attach controversial legislation calling for possible new sanctions on Iran that President Barack Obama opposes.

"The issue of Iran sanctions ... has nothing to do with the needs of veterans," complained Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders of Vermont, the main sponsor of the bill.

Republicans also raised budget concerns, forcing another key procedural vote that ended up killing the bill. By a vote of 56-41, the Senate failed to waive budget rules that would have allowed the bill to proceed. Sixty votes were needed and 41 of the chamber's 45 Republicans voted against the waiver.

Referring to recent budget deals that aim to bring down federal deficits, Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama said: "This bill would spend more than we agreed to spend. The ink is hardly dry and here we have another bill to raise that spending again."

The legislation had the backing of most veterans' organizations, but was doomed by deep disagreements between Democrats and Republicans that have made this Congress one of the least productive in decades.

The sad state of the criminally underfunded, terribly understaffed VA rests wholly on the shoulders of Republicans who said it was too expensive to fix our broken VA system and voted to kill this legislation that would have overhauled it. Our vets, some who gave everything in defense of America, were told by 41 Republican senators who blocked this bill that they don't matter.

Republicans don't give a good god damn about our nation's veterans.  They are nothing but political toys for them to attack Democrats with.  And now these assholes have the temerity to complain that Democrats haven't spent enough caring for vets?

Go to hell, all of you.

See Like A Hawk

The Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks visited the White House on Wednesday and President Obama welcomed them with a few notable observations.

Obama highlighted quarterback Russell Wilson, the second African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl after Washington's Doug Williams. "The best part about" Wilson's achievement, Obama said, "is nobody commented on it, which tells you the progress that we've made, although we've got more progress to make."

Amen to that.

Once inside, the president said he took special note of running back Marshawn Lynch, who was fined by the NFL this season for refusing to speak to the media.

"I just wanted to say how much I admire his approach to the press," Obama said of Lynch, who did not join the team at the White House. "I wanted to get some tips from him."

Cornerback Richard Sherman did attend the ceremony, and Obama joked he had considered allowing the outspoken Stanford graduate to take the mic.

"I considered letting Sherman up here to the podium today, giving him the mic, but we've got to go in a little bit," Obama said.

Congrats again to the Seahawks and their fans, being a North Carolinian and only getting to watch a victory parade in our state when Cam Ward, Ron Brind'Amour and the Carolina Hurricanes won Game 7 and the Stanley Cup in 2006, I know it was a long wait for the Emerald City.

Sadly, it was the only time Dubya was happy to see a Hurricane in his White House career, but I digress.

StupidiNews!

• Several blasts in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang province, have claimed at least 31 lives as a busy marketplace was attacked by SUVs plowing into crowds and hurling explosive devices.
• A Southern California woman kidnapped a decade ago has been found and her apparent captor arrested after the victim contacted authorities through Facebook.
• EBay is advising all customers to change their passwords after admitting that 145 million user accounts were compromised in the second largest data breach in US history.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin says that troops massed on the Ukrainian border will be pulled back by June 1 as a gesture of good faith towards this weekend's separatist national election.
• Google is expected to announce a deal to acquire video game streaming site Twitch in a roughly $1 billion deal, but critics say Google's content ID system will all but destroy Twitch's core service.