Last Call For Rock Hard Truth

Your evening assignment is Frank Rich's interview with comedian Chris Rock, who lays out the issues of President Obama, race and America better than anyone else I've read in years.

On Obama:

What do you think of how he’s done? Here we are in the last two years of his presidency, and there’s a sense among his supporters of disappointment, that he’s disengaged. 

I’m trying to figure out the right analogy. Everybody wanted Michael Jordan, right? We got Shaq. That’s not a disappointment. You know what I mean? We got Charles Barkley. It’s still a Hall of Fame career. The president should be graded on jobs and peace, and the other stuff is debatable. Do more people have jobs, and is there more peace? I guess there’s a little more peace. Not as much peace as we’d like, but I mean, that’s kind of the gig. I don’t recall anybody leaving on an up. It’s just that kind of job. I mean, the liberals that are against him feel let down because he’s not Bush. And the thing about George Bush is that the kid revolutionized the presidency. How? He was the first president who only served the people who voted for him. He literally operated like a cable network. You know what I mean? 

He pandered to his target audience. 

He’s the first cable-television president, and the thing liberals don’t like about Obama is that he’s a network guy. He’s kind of Les Moonves.8 He’s trying to get everybody. And I think he’s figured out, and maybe a little late, that there’s some people he’s never going to get.

He goes on to say that Obama should have let the economy crash and then bring in his own people. Not sure I agree with that, but then again who would have really been hurt doing that?  Wall Street? Main Street was going to be screwed either way.

On race and Ferguson:

What would you do in Ferguson that a standard reporter wouldn’t? 

I’d do a special on race, but I’d have no black people. 

Well, that would be much more revealing. 

Yes, that would be an event. Here’s the thing. When we talk about race relations in America or racial progress, it’s all nonsense. There are no race relations. White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before. 

Right. It’s ridiculous. 

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years. If you saw Tina Turner and Ike having a lovely breakfast over there, would you say their relationship’s improved? Some people would. But a smart person would go, “Oh, he stopped punching her in the face.” It’s not up to her. Ike and Tina Turner’s relationship has nothing to do with Tina Turner. Nothing. It just doesn’t. The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people. 

It’s about white people adjusting to a new reality? 

Owning their actions. Not even their actions. The actions of your dad. Yeah, it’s unfair that you can get judged by something you didn’t do, but it’s also unfair that you can inherit money that you didn’t work for.

It's amazing stuff and long overdue being said.  Check it out.

A Total Loss

Instagoofball has some 2016 predictions, and nobody's surprised to find he's predicting a total wipeout of the Democratic party, as the conventional wisdom now is that Democrats have permanently lost the white vote forever.

Working class white people don't like President Obama much. According to the latest Gallup poll, only 27% approve of him. That's 21 percentage points down since he took office in 2009.

A standard talking-point is that these voters don't like Obama because they're racist. But that assumes that the key word in "white working class" is "white." In fact, the key word is "working." After all, Obama isn't any blacker than he was in 2009.

That's a pretty bizarre chunk of logic there: because fewer white voters like Obama now than six years ago, none of them can be racist, otherwise they would have hated Obama six years ago. Putting that idiocy aside for a moment the fact that the right wing noise machine has spent the last six years trying to convince white voters that Obama is the racist and that he will give taxpayer money to black voters as reparations and bribery, we arrive at this:

Can the Democrats solve this problem? Sure. These are all policies that could be changed, though a lot of party constituencies would oppose it. And Democrats might choose a working-class-friendly nominee, too, if they can find one. Of course, the current favorite is Hillary Clinton, who went to Wellesley and makes $300,000 for giving a speech, and the No. 2 prospect for 2016 is probably Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard Law professor who made $212,000 for representing an asbestos company. Portraying either of them as working class heroes will be an uphill battle.

And there's another problem: The white working class may have abandoned Obama, but the black and Hispanicworking classes have mostly stayed loyal to him. But what do Clinton or Warren have that might inspire similar loyalty? Come 2016, it may not just be the white part of the working class that the Democrats have trouble with.

Democrats not only cannot be populists because they make money (you know, like that Obama guy) but that racist, anti-white Democratic minority voters are going to stay home because the Dems will nominate a white person, so nobody on Earth will actually vote for them and Republicans will win easily because they are the party of the working class. 

That's actually kind of funny if you think about it.  Certainly the Democrats can lose.

But only if they try to be the Republicans.

 

Another Massive Cop Out

Remember folks, according to conservatives, it's on you the citizens to always obey police officers at all times, or your life is forfeit.  This applies to off-duty police officers too, right?

A Houston woman was shot in the head by an off-duty police officer after she honked at him for cutting her off, KHOU 11 reports.

The victim — who did not wish to be identified for fear of retaliation — said that she was driving on the 610 Loop when Kenneth Caplan cut her off.

“He was about to hit me,” she said, “so I switched to the other lane, got in front of him and cut him off. I guess that pissed him off,” because he pulled alongside her, rolled down his window and opened fire.

“He was aiming at me and I thought he was going to cuss me out. It didn’t register that I was, you know, going to get shot. I just started crying because I knew I was going to die,” the victim said. “I wanted to call my mom to tell her ‘I love you.’”

One bullet grazed her head, opening a gaping wound that would not stop bleeding.

“I was like ‘oh my God, he just shot me.’ I was applying pressure to my head because it wouldn’t stop bleeding,” the victim said. “The blood was in between my nails, just crazy blood, and all over my cellphone, just covered.”

If she had just obeyed the police officer, she wouldn't have been shot.  That's the "lesson of Ferguson" we're supposed to all have learned, yes?  She didn't obey the law and she didn't obey the officer, so her life is forfeit.  That's what conservatives tell us we need to do or else people get shot.

Right?  Clearly she was a threat to the officer with her vehicle.  He was afraid for his life.  He had every right to shoot her, there's no need for a grand jury, and we should take the officer at his word 100%, anyone else is a radical and identity politics hustle, right?

Right?

StupidiNews!

• Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi says he has removed some 50,000 "ghost soldiers" who have abandoned their posts in the Iraqi Army from the rolls.
• A St. Louis police officers' group is demanding that several St. Louis NFL players face league punishment after showing solidarity on the field with Ferguson protesters.
• Hong Kong police are warning pro-democracy protesters not to return to the streets after they were able to successfully shut down a government HQ for several hours on Monday.
• Beijing-based Dalian Wanda Group, parent company of AMC Theaters, is making a $4.7 billion bid to buy a stake in studios Lions Gate and MGM.
• EU police agency Europol has arrested nearly 120 in a major credit card fraud sting to purchase plane tickets for illegal drug transport and human trafficking.

Last Call For Religious Freedom (For Some)

To recap, the First Amendment allows for freedom of religious worship, unless Islam.  Wait, there's no "unless Islam" part?  Could have fooled Minnesota Republican Jack Whitley.

A Minnesota Republican who posted inflammatory remarks about Muslims on his Facebook page resigned from his position as the chairman of the Big Stone County Republican Party on Friday.

Jack Whitley told the Associated Press he had no plans to resign, but was asked to by other board members after his comments became national news.

Whitley had said he was opposed waterboarding terrorists because he believed that Muslim “parasites” should be killed.

After facing criticism for the remarks, he doubled-down, adding that Muslims should either convert to Christianity or leave the United States. He also said that Muslims don’t deserve First Amendment rights because Islam “infringes on the peace and the tranquility of this nation.”

“If you want to consider this a call to arms, then so be it,” he wrote on his Facebook page, which has since been made private.

But remember, liberals are the intolerant ones because the First Amendment applying to anyone other than Christians is "PC fascism" against Baby Jesus.  Besides, if you have a problem with the First Amendment applying only to whom Republicans say it applies to:

“If you want to consider this a call to arms, then so be it”

Then the Second Amendment will remedy it, right?

Held To A Different Standard

Whether or not you believe the White House turkey pardoning tradition is endearing or insipid (or both!) the fact remains that while Obama is in the Oval Office, he is held to a different and higher standard than previous occupants.  And the same apparently goes for his daughters, Sasha and Malia.

A Republican staffer apologized on Friday for comments she made about the way Sasha and Malia Obama dressed for the turkey pardoning ceremony on Wednesday.

Elizabeth Lauten, the communications director for Rep. Stephen Fincher (R-TN), wrote in a Facebook post that the Obama girls did not dress with "class" and looked like they were dressed for "a spot at a bar."

Yes, that's right, the First Daughters are under attack for being teenagers.  Well, teenagers who are a little different than the previous ones.

Dear Sasha and Malia, I get you’re both in those awful teen years, but you’re a part of the First Family, try showing a little class. At least respect the part you play. Then again your mother and father don’t respect their positions very much, or the nation for that matter, so I’m guessing you’re coming up a little short in the ‘good role model’ department. Nevertheless, stretch yourself. Rise to the occasion. Act like being in the White House matters to you. Dress like you deserve respect, not a spot at a bar. And certainly don’t make faces during televised public events.

There are many things wrong with this, but let's start with the way Lauten is trying to slut shame Obama's daughters.  As a reminder, this is what they were wearing Wednesday:



How awful.

Exactly what's wrong with what Sasha and Malia Obama are wearing?  OH NOES YOU CAN SEE HER KNEES.  And remember, this is from the same group of people constantly complaining about how the War on Women is a myth, and that liberals are fascists who are controlling every aspect of how we look and dress in a too politically correct world.  They are teenagers, dressed as such.

And yet she has the unmitigated call to tell the daughters of the first African-American president in US history to "stretch" and "rise to the occasion?"

No, this is a snarling Republican operative putting two young women of color in their place, plain and simple. The assumption of privilege here is overwhelming.

As usual with these cases, her apology was even worse.

"I reacted to an article and quickly judged the two young ladies in a way that I would never have wanted to be judged myself as a teenager. After many hours of prayer, talking to my parents and re-reading my words online, I can see more clearly how hurtful my words were," she wrote. "Please know that these judgmental feelings truly have no pace in my heart. Furthermore, I'd like to apologize to all of those who I have hurt and offended with my words, and pledge to learn and grow (and I assure you I have) from this experience."

I'm sorry you thought I was offending you, and I prayed for hours, so I'm off the hook.

Even more privilege assumed.

Remember, she's a political PR professional, hired as such.  If anything, she's woefully incompetent and should be fired.

On second thought, Republicans should probably promote her.  I'd love to see this person in charge of the GOP's 2016 campaign messaging.  And remember kids, Sasha and Malia are fair game in the eyes of the GOP.

The Grand Screwing In Ferguson, Con't

Andrew "Aptly Named" McCarthy at National Review wonders out loud why the "race hustlers" even made Darren Wilson go to a grand jury after shooting Michael Brown.  After all, the "facts" were Wilson, as a cop, had only to tell his side of the story to end the case right then and there.

For the American Left, a bedrock myth is that white cops kill black kids. It derives from the overarching myth that casts racism as our indelible national sin. As Heather Mac Donald explains, citing exhaustive criminology studies, it flows seamlessly from the quackery that dismisses the disproportionately high incidence of violent crime in African-American communities as an illusion — as the product of police racism and the consequent hyper-targeting of black boys and men, rather than of racial differences in patterns of offending.

Darren Wilson was a white cop and Michael Brown was a black teenager killed in a violent confrontation with Wilson. Therefore, Brown was the victim of a cold-blooded, racially motivated murder, Q.E.D. That is the myth, and it will be served — don’t bother us with the facts.

Once you’ve got that, none of the rest matters. In fact, at the hands of the left-leaning punditocracy, the rest was pure Alinsky: a coopting of language — in this instance, the argot of grand-jury procedure — to reason back to the ordained conclusion that “justice” demanded Wilson’s indictment for murder. And, of course, his ultimate conviction.

I could spend the rest of the day rehearsing why these legal claims are specious. Particularly risible is the story line that the grand jury convened by St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch was a sham — a story line that is itself an elaborate fraud.

Prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich, we were lectured, because the state’s burden in a grand-jury proceeding is so scant. Prosecutors need not prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, as they must do at trial; they merely need show probable cause that a crime was committed — and by the person of whom it was alleged — and a trial should therefore be held. There was conflicting testimony about who the aggressor was in the Wilson–Brown confrontation; therefore, the story line goes, there was more than enough cause to indict Wilson and let the ultimate determination of guilt — and you can be sure they mean guilt — be made at a public trial. McCulloch instead used the grand jury to exculpate Wilson, a white (cop) privilege that a black defendant could never dream of obtaining.

To describe this as nonsense is a slander on nonsense. It is freely conceded that the grand-jury inquest into Brown’s killing was more a political than a legal exercise. That, however, was the result of intimidation by the Left’s race-mythology agitators — very much including the president and the attorney general of the United States. It was clearly not aimed at benefitting Wilson.

McCarthy hits all the notes in his piece:  Liberals are like Stalin, Mussolini, and of course Saul Alinsky, Obama is a race agitator, and since Wilson, as a cop, would never have been convicted, there was no reason to even bring the case to a grand jury.

And of course, the real victim here is Darren Wilson, who has been "forced" to resign for a crime he didn't commit.  Or rather, what he did commit was not a crime in the death of Mike Brown.  Brown is dead, but of course with McCarthy and the right, that's not the point.  The community raised half a million for Wilson, and he'll have a nice retirement from his job now.

Congrats, here's your bonus for killing a black kid.  And for no extra charge, we get McCarthy here to dictate the tale of Darren Wilson, Real American Hero, who did his job by killing one of those "thugs".

The same people who tell us that liberals are unapologetic fascists are the same ones who see no problem with domestic law enforcement being judge, jury, and executioner.  That's not strange at all, is it?

[UPDATE] National Review editor Rich Lowry reinforces the "lesson" of Ferguson:

But what I really object to is you can discuss all of these problems, but let's not pretend that this particular incident was something it wasn't. If you look at the most credible evidence, the lessons are really basic. Don't rob a convenience store. Don't fight a policeman when he's stopped you and try to take his gun and when he yells at you to stop with is gun drawn, just stop and none of this would have happened.

To recap, failing to obey a police officer is punishable by summary execution.  Oh well. Eggs get broken, America.

Sunday Morning Read: Art Is Theft, Art As Theft

Your Sunday morning long read is Robert Kolker's NY Magazine piece on the bizarre story of artist Jasper Johns and his assistant James Meyer, and how the reclusive artist is accusing Meyer of stealing his work.  But there's always more to the story than just simple theft, especially when the artist has always been secretive.  And since Johns's work has sold for tens of millions of dollars in the past, well, when you involve sums of money like that, things always get complicated.

Johns’s primary studio — a large, fully renovated old barn on the grounds of his 130-acre estate in Sharon, Connecticut — is a reflection of his personality. There is no Jeff Koons–like army of implementers doing his bidding and no Andy Warhol–like Factory of hangers-on in the corners, watching it all happen. He only occasionally allows visitors; the few assistants he’s employed are meant to recede into the background, there but not there. It was in Sharon that one friend, the art dealer Francis Naumann, first met Johns’s longtime studio assistant James Meyer.

Given how withdrawn Meyer was around Johns, it’s a little remarkable that Naumann managed to get to know him at all. Stocky and mostly silent, Meyer seemed mainly to be on hand to help Johns move things around in the studio; he would join them for lunch, too, but rarely took part in the conversation and almost never shared an opinion. After a number of visits, Meyer let Naumann know that he, too, was an artist. “He was painting a little like Jasper,” the art dealer remembers, “though, of course, he was completely unknown.” When he learned that Meyer had dyslexia and had difficulty writing the personal statements and other literature that an artist needs to be noticed by gallery owners and dealers, Naumann offered to help. “Every once in a while he would send me something that he wrote, and I would try to put it into better English.”

Naumann’s next brush with Meyer — the important one — took place in the spring of 2009. Naumann was contacted by a fellow art dealer named Fred Dorfman, asking if he knew of any collectors in the market for a small work by Jasper Johns, a 12-by-14-inch black-and-white drawing on plastic — “a complete and fully finished, beautiful drawing” signed by Johns, Naumann says. Dorfman emailed a photo of the drawing to Naumann, who then sent it to a client of his, a New Jersey–based collector named Frank Kolodny, who fell in love with it. Soon after, Naumann learned that the person selling the drawing was Meyer. On the face of it, he insists, the news that Johns’s longtime studio assistant was unloading one of his boss’s works struck him as only slightly peculiar. Artists like Meyer “always need money at one time or another,” Naumann says.

Given everything that’s happened since, it’s not surprising that Naumann sounds a little defensive when he tells the rest of the story. It made sense at the time, he says, that Meyer would, over the years, have received at least one of Johns’s works as a present. In fact, Naumann had once seen a Johns drawing not so different from this one hanging above the fireplace in the home of Sarah Taggart, Johns’s secretary. It also made sense, Naumann says, when he learned that Meyer had set two conditions on the transaction: The sale could not be public, and the buyer could not resell the drawing for eight years. “You can’t go tell the artist, ‘I’m selling the drawing you gave me,’ ” Naumann says. “It might make it a little bit uncomfortable if he’s still working for the guy.”

They agreed on a sale price: $400,000. Naumann says he conducted the appropriate due diligence. He negotiated for Kolodny to be allowed to break the eight-year sale restriction if Meyer stopped working for Johns for any reason. He had Dorfman send him a copy of an official record kept in Johns’s office, verifying the work was a gift to Meyer. And he got a sworn affidavit from Meyer himself saying the work was authentic, he’d owned it since 1995, and he had the authority to sell it.

What he didn’t do, however, was pick up the phone to try to discuss the sale with Johns. Better, he thought, to be discreet — and sensitive to the studio assistant who was parting with an artistic treasure he no doubt had witnessed the master create. For the same reason, he says, he never spoke with Meyer. This couldn’t have been an easy decision for the man. Why rub it in?

It would be another three years before Naumann, along with everyone else, would learn the truth — that the page from Johns’s ledger was a complete forgery; that the drawing, though a genuine artwork by Jasper Johns, never belonged to Meyer; that Meyer had covertly pulled it from a file drawer in Johns’s studio; and that there’d been a lot more where that came from.

The whole story, I think, would make an excellent movie. Meyers is an artist in his own right, a frustrated one, obliterated in the shadow of the great Jasper Johns, and that's where things get very fuzzy.  Do read the story.

Shoot The Messenger

As Martin Longman points out, if you thought the Democrats were serious about trying to win the Senate back in 2016 with Sen. Elizabeth Warren in charge of strategy, all that ended Friday when the Dems placed Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia in charge of the party's messaging machine.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia was almost bounced out of Congress, primarily because he and the Democratic Party were criminally overconfident about beating tomato can, Ed Gillespie. It was a humbling experience because Warner was seen as immensely popular in his home state, and just the kind of vice-presidential candidate who could put some Electoral College delegates firmly in the hands of Hillary Clinton, or any other Democratic nominee. Warner's comeuppance didn't last too long, however. Despite leaking that he had voted against Harry Reid to remain the leader of the Senate Democrats, he was just awarded a similar kind of leadership position to Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said that Warner will be "taking on the role of policy development advisor at the Democratic Policy and Communications Center."

Mmm, a healthy diet of debt nonsense and "entitlement reform" for all the poors.  The Catfood Commission is back, kids, and this time there's just one man running the whole show.

The split is particularly apparent on fiscal matters, as could be seen on the campaign trail in Virginia where Warner won an unexpectedly close re-election campaign against former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. Warner held campaign events touting fiscal responsibility, even telling a room full of Democrats that some of them might be better off voting for Republicans if they would support a debt and deficit deal that includes revenue increases.

Looking forward to that GOP Congress for the next, oh, forever.  Just need to blow it badly enough to stick Jebbie or Rand in the Oval Office and we'll fiscally responsible our way right into total oblivion.

The 2016 Clown Car Clock Strikes Thirteen

The Hill identifies the baker's dozen of GOP goofballs potentially running for the White House in 2016, and these thirteen are a solid wall of losers each with their own problems that will prevent them from ever winning.

The current driver is Rand Paul:

Paul would not have been in the top tier just a few months ago, but since then he’s become a media sensation. He’s as comfortable bashing the president for his immigration executive actions on Fox News as he is joking about pot with Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time.”

In addition to inheriting his father’s campaign infrastructure, he’s moved early and aggressively to build his own from Silicon Valley to Washington.

Paul’s Libertarian streak could appeal to young voters who have tilted Democratic in recent years. And out of the top tier of establishment contenders, he has the best chance of winning the Iowa caucuses, which would make him the unquestioned frontrunner.

There's a lot of push to make Paul the libertarian version of Dubya's "compassionate conservative", where compassion is replaced by "profit margin".  For the voters who believe that everyone would be a millionaire except for those pesky government regulations and that those people just need to work 95 hours a week if they really wanted to not be poor, Paul is their man.  Bonus points for his forays into the dark urban jungle to visit the natives there to show people he cares about black and Latino voters. 

I think that's what bothers me the most about Rand Paul, that to him, voters of color are noble but ignorant savages that simply need to be educated on the wonders of Randian capitalism, like the calendar reads 1732 and Detroit is the heart of the new Dark Continent.  If we were only shown the enlightenment of Republican conservatism, we'd instantly leave behind the "Democrat plantation" forever.

That's the basis of Rand Paul's minority outreach.  Black and Latino voters are too stupid to see the truth and need to be educated by any means necessary.  It's really not too different from the days of African Colonialism or the British Raj, only it's the police doing the dirty work.  When we talk about the "modern apartheid state" here in America, it's not terribly far from the truth.

And Rand Paul is the guy packaging all that in a guilt-free wrapper for a lot of Republican voters (and more than a few young white Democratic voters too).

Of the thirteen the Hill lists, Rand Paul is by far the most dangerous.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• For the first time since 2007, a CNN poll on the mood of Americans finally find a majority, 52%, believe things are going well in the country.
• US corporations are threatening to pull support for the Affordable Care Act over the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's recent lawsuits over employee wellness programs.
• Ferguson demonstrators peacefully blocked and shut down a St Louis mall on Black Friday as protests over the death of Michael Brown continue across the country.
• Gas prices in some parts of the country may drop to the $2 a gallon mark as OPEC production quotas remain high and oil prices are dropping towards $60 a barrel.
• Sony has jumped into the smartwatch game with a crowdfunded campaign to test the waters, and the company says the response was so good, they're moving forward with manufacturing.

Last Call For Meanwhile, Out In The Rest Of The World

Other things out there besides Black Friday sales, shifty grand juries, and movie trailers, folks.  Some of it is pretty unrelentingly awful.

Gunmen set off three bombs and opened fire on worshippers at the main mosque in north Nigeria's biggest city Kano on Friday, killing at least 81 people, witnesses and officials said, in an attack that bore the hallmarks of Islamist Boko Haram militants.

Blasts from the coordinated assault rang out as scores of people packed into the ancient building's courtyard for afternoon prayers. "These people have bombed the mosque. I am face to face with people screaming," said local reporter Chijjani Usman.

The mosque is next to the palace of the emir of Kano, the second highest Islamic authority in Africa's most populous country and a vocal critic of Boko Haram. The emir, former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi, was not present.

Boko Haram, a Sunni jihadist movement which is fighting to revive a medieval Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria, regards the traditional Islamic religious authorities in Nigeria with disdain.

It has attacked mosques that do not follow its radical ideology in a bloody near six-year campaign that has also targeted churches, schools, police stations, military bases and government buildings.

"After multiple explosions, they also opened fire. I cannot tell you the casualties because we all ran away," a member of staff at the palace told Reuters on Friday.

After the attacks, angry youths blocked the mosque's gates to police, who had to force their way in with tear gas.

Not a fan of religion, even less so when it's used as a basis for murdering dozens of people.  Boko Haram is a problem, and while it's not our war to fight, pretending that they'll just give up and go away is also not an option.  President Goodluck Jonathan says he won't rest until all these militants are dead, but that hasn't exactly been the case when it came to the girls these bastards kidnapped earlier.  They've created nearly a million refugees alone from the fighting and terror campaigns in Nigeria's north.

Puts things here in harsh perspective, right?

The War On Women, Post 2014 Midterms Edition

Democratic voters stayed home in 2014, and as a result, Republicans at the state level are more powerful than ever.  Their first order of business?  Making it even harder to get a safe, legal abortion procedure in a number of states.

Republicans now hold two-thirds of the state legislative bodies, after winning control of 11 more chambers. They completely control the legislature in more than half the states, adding Nevada, New Hampshire and West Virginia to that list earlier this month. And they gained two more governor’s seats, so they will hold 31 next year.

Republican leaders who will control the U.S. Senate come January say they want to take up abortion this year, perhaps on a House-passed bill that would limit the procedure after 20 weeks. But the reality is that Senate Republicans will still fall a few votes shy of the 60 needed for controversial major legislation. It’s the states where Republicans can enact more abortion limits.

“We came out of Nov. 4th with a lot of momentum,” said Chuck Donovan, president of the research and education arm of Susan B. Anthony List, which is dedicated to electing candidates who oppose abortion. He expects the number of anti-abortion measures proposed in the states to reflect that. “I think we’re about to get another uptick.”

Thirteen states have passed bans on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy — so-called fetal pain bills — and a couple have enacted earlier limits tied to when a fetal heartbeat is first detected, which can be six or seven weeks into a pregnancy. Several of these state laws are being contested in court, and the arguments may eventually end up in the Supreme Court. But that hasn’t deterred more states from eyeing such legislation; in Ohio, a House panel approved a fetal heartbeat bill just a few days ago.

Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards predicts that 2015 will bring more attempts to enact restrictive state laws. She said she expects “state legislative attacks on women’s health, even though the vast majority of the public wants elected officials to protect and expand access to safe and legal abortion, birth control and preventive health care.”

So yes, these laws are going to end up in front of the Roberts Court.  There's no reason to believe that they will rule in favor of women here, and "small government conservatives" and "libertarians" are going to be pushing for even stricter regulation of women's reproductive systems.

But that's what YOU voted for, either in truth, or by sitting home and saying "there's no difference between the two parties, why should I care?"

More Turkey For Thanksgiving

Karoli at Crooks and Liars makes this catch of Lawrence O'Donnell's analysis of the Darren Wilson grand jury proceedings, and those proceedings were nothing short of shocking.

This is how the Grand Jury arrived at their verdict. Early on in the proceedings, Assistant District Attorney Alizadeh handed out copies of a law that was ruled unconstitutional in 1985. In essence it set the bar for use of excessive force lower than is permissible. Simply put, ADA Alizadeh told the jury that it was permissible to shoot a fleeing suspect.

Tennessee v. Garner made the statute Alizadeh distributed to the Grand Jury unconstitutional, but that didn't stop her from distributing it to grand jurors at the outset in order to set their minds in a place where Darren Wilson was justified in what he did.

Then, at the very end of the proceedings on November 21st, Alizadeh "corrected" the record. Sort of.

For the entire proceeding, jurors weighed the evidence in light of a law that was deemed unconstitutional almost 30 years ago. Then they corrected the record at the very end, but by then it was too late.

Alizadeh only tells the grand jurors that the law they've been using for over two months in order to assess the legality of Darren Wilson's shooting of Michael Brown isn't the law on the final day of the proceedings.

And she passes off using a law ruled unconstitutional in 1985 as a mistake.

A law that just happened to exonerate Darren Wilson of any wrongdoing using his version of events, a law that said a fleeing suspect can still be shot without penalty, ruled unconstitutional nearly 30 years ago.

But I'm supposed to trust the system.

OK.  Sure.

Thanksgiving Turkeys In Congress

The chief goal among Republicans in Congress right now is not jobs, or healthcare, or even "the will of the American people", but punishing President Obama like he's an errant child.

Congress returns to Washington Dec. 1, just 10 days before government funding is set to expire, and Boehner and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) say they are intent on avoiding a government shutdown. Obama’s executive action has inflamed conservatives, who believe he has overstepped his constitutional authority. Some hard-line GOP lawmakers are calling for a showdown with Obama, but Boehner and McConnell have no desire to relive the October 2013 government shutdown. McConnell, Boehner and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that the Republican-controlled Capitol Hill would stop governing by crisis. Boehner last week, however, said that he has plenty of energy to fight Obama.

Some conservatives have called on Congress to choke off funding for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, but those employees are funded by fees, not congressional appropriations.

GOP aides and lawmakers say they expect the leadership to consider additional legislation to address the executive order, but there have been no decisions made on what those bills would look like. There are lots of ideas: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has signaled he would hold up some of Obama’s executive branch nominees, others privately have been musing about shutting the government down, refusing to invite the president to give his State of the Union address or censuring the president. Many in congressional leadership think these ideas are nonsensical, since it will not serve any practical purpose.

To recap, Republicans in Congress are so utterly petty and hateful that they're falling all over themselves to see who can be the biggest asshole to President Obama.  That's what they are worried about right now.

And that's all that matters.

Last Call For No Lessons Learned

National Review carbuncle Rich Lowry gets a slot over at Team WIN THE MORNING Magazine, and goes beyond his usual simpering semi-clueless stupidity directly into pure evil territory. 

The bitter irony of the Michael Brown case is that if he had actually put his hands up and said don't shoot, he would almost certainly be alive today. His family would have been spared an unspeakable loss, and Ferguson, Missouri wouldn't have experienced multiple bouts of rioting, including the torching of at least a dozen businesses the night it was announced that Officer Darren Wilson wouldn't be charged with a crime. 

Instead, the credible evidence (i.e., the testimony that doesn't contradict itself or the physical evidence) suggests that Michael Brown had no interest in surrendering. After committing an act of petty robbery at a local business, he attacked Officer Wilson when he stopped him on the street. Brown punched Wilson when the officer was still in his patrol car and attempted to take his gun from him. 

The first shots were fired within the car in the struggle over the gun. Then, Michael Brown ran. Even if he hadn't put his hands up, but merely kept running away, he would also almost certainly be alive today. Again, according to the credible evidence, he turned back and rushed Wilson. The officer shot several times, but Brown kept on coming until Wilson killed him.

To believe this version of events, you have to be completely and with purpose, blind to basic human instinct to the point of malice.  Or you could be Rich Lowry, same thing.  You would have to believe that A) Wilson knew that Brown committed a crime, B) that Brown would go for Wilson's gun, and C) that after Brown was shot and ran away that he changed his mind and charged the guy who just shot him.

And on top of all that, you have to believe that there was no probable cause whatsoever to dispute this.  None.  Come to think of it, nine other Rich Lowrys on that grand jury did just that, didn't they?

This is a terrible tragedy. It isn't a metaphor for police brutality or race repression or anything else, and never was. Aided and abetted by a compliant national media, the Ferguson protestors spun a dishonest or misinformed version of what happened—Michael Brown murdered in cold blood while trying to give up—into a chant ("hands up, don't shoot") and then a mini-movement.

Yes, because the media killed Mike Brown.  Barring that, what's one more dead black person shot by a cop and left on the street for 4.5 hours?  Race has nothing to do with it, you see, because we all know those people are all thugs and criminals, so it's just one more insane savage beast being put down like the beast he was.  America!

When the facts didn't back their narrative, they dismissed the facts and retreated into paranoid suspicion of the legal system. It apparently required more intellectual effort than almost any liberal could muster even to say, "You know, I believe policing in America is deeply unjust, but in this case the evidence is murky and not enough to indict, let alone convict anyone of a crime."

How is policing in America unjust, I wonder, if Lowry sees no injustice in this?

Oh yeah, evil.  It's always the ni-CLANG!s fault.

Air Apparent In The Supreme Court

With the Supreme Court upholding their 2011 ruling that the EPA can regulate greenhouse gas emissions last June, the latest ploy by energy companies to kill regulatory pressure to clean up their acts is to now go after mercury regulations, and the Supreme Court will indeed hear a challenge to those regulations.

The twist this time?  The regulations are too expensive, according to Big Energy.  You know, some of the most profitable companies on Earth.

The basic question in the new case is whether and when the E.P.A. must take regulation costs into account. The agency’s interpretation is that the Clean Air Act, which requires regulations to be “appropriate and necessary,” does not demand that costs be taken into consideration early in the regulatory process.

In the Supreme Court term that ended in June, the justices heard cases filed by industry groups against two of the Obama administration’s environmental regulations — one aimed at limiting power plant pollution that wafts across state lines, the other at cutting planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

The E.P.A. won the first case and largely prevailed in the second, though the Supreme Court indicated that it remained prepared to impose limits on the agency’s regulatory authority.

The case against the mercury pollution rule is likely to be followed by more fights. The E.P.A. on Wednesday will release a regulation to cut ozone pollution. Next year, the agency is scheduled to finalize rules that would slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Environmental law experts say the Supreme Court’s decision in the mercury case may provide some hints about how those other rules might fare.

“Is this part of a larger trend of the Supreme Court exerting greater authority over E.P.A.’s regulations?” asked Roger R. Martella Jr., a general counsel at the agency during President George W. Bush’s administration. The new case is a challenge by more than 20 states, along with industry groups and energy companies.

The problem here is that a broad ruling in favor of corporations could blow a hole in any regulations issued by the Executive Branch, depending on what SCOTUS defines as "appropriate".  The energy companies (and 20 red states) say that at most, the regulations will only generate a couple million dollars in benefits at the cost of nearly $10 billion.  The EPA says it will save 11,000 lives a year.

We'll see how much of a price tag SCOTUS puts on this, with a ruling expected in June.

Taxing Our Patience Again

Ahh, the lame duck session after a midterm election.  Where the truly nasty business goes.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reached a compromise with House Republicans on a package of tax breaks that would permanently extend relief for big multinational corporations without providing breaks for middle or lower-income families, individuals with knowledge of the deal tell ThinkProgress. 

Under the terms of the $444 billion agreement, lawmakers would phase out all tax breaks for clean energy and wind energy but would maintain fossil fuel subsidies. Expanded eligibility for the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit would also end in 2017, even though the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that allowing the provisions to expire would push “16 million people in low-income working families, including 8 million children into — or deeper into — poverty.” The proposal would help students pay for college by making permanent the American Permanent Opportunity Tax Credit, a Democratic priority. 

Meanwhile, two-thirds of the package would make permanent tax provisions that are intended to help businesses, including a research and development credit, small business expensing, and a reduction in the S-Corp recognition period for built-in gains tax.

The costs of the package will not be offset.

So roughly $300 billion for businesses, and the middle class gets hosed in the deal.  Nice.  The big loser, green energy, the big winner, oil.

Same as it ever was, too.  Question is will Obama sign it? 

The answer, thankfully, appears to be "no".

Obama objected and responded in an unusual way yesterday. The White House issued a veto threat before lawmakers released the plan publicly, siding with progressive groups and advocates for a lower budget deficit over his own party’s Senate leaders.

“The president would veto the proposed deal because it would provide permanent tax breaks to help well-connected corporations while neglecting working families,” Jen Friedman, a White House spokeswoman, said in an e-mail yesterday.

Good.  We'll see how well this deal holds up now.

StupidiNews!

• Protest demonstration took place in 170 US cities last night over the failure of a grand jury to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michal Brown.
• The US Supreme Court will take up a case brought by red states and energy companies challenging the Obama administration's EPA regulations on mercury air pollution.
• Former Defense Department official Michele Flournoy, considered the front runner to replace outgoing Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, has withdrawn her name from consideration.
• A major East Coast snowstorm will snarl Thanksgiving traffic from North Carolina to Maine on Wednesday, with snow forecast up to 8 inches in places like NYC and Boston.
• New research on the collapse of honeybee colonies shows that the decline of certain flowers due to climate change in some parts of the world is affecting bee colony health.

Last Call For No Justice

And I know, twice in one day, but Rand Paul is that much of an embarrassment.

Reforming criminal justice to make it racially blind is imperative, but that won’t lift up these young men from poverty. In fact, I don’t believe any law will. For too long, we’ve attached some mythic notion to government solutions and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds. 

When you look at statistics for the white community alone, you see that we’ve become two separate worlds in which the successful are educated and wait to have children until they are married, and those in poverty are primarily those without higher education and with children outside of marriage. 

This message is not a racial one. The link between poverty, lack of education, and children outside of marriage is staggering and cuts across all racial groups. Statistics uniformly show that waiting to have children in marriage and obtaining an education are an invaluable part of escaping poverty. 

I have no intention to scold, but escaping the poverty and crime trap will require more than just criminal justice reform. Escaping the poverty trap will require all of us to relearn that not only are we our brother’s keeper, we are our own keeper. While a hand-up can be part of the plan, if the plan doesn’t include the self-discovery of education, work, and the self-esteem that comes with work, the cycle of poverty will continue.

Get a job, poor people.  The government's not responsible for you.  Unless, ironically, you end up in prison.  Which Rand Paul is trying to prevent, see.  Classice Rand Paul here, there's no government solution to a system that was never designed to help black people.

Bonus No Intention To Scold Scolding:

I will continue the fight to reform our nation’s criminal justice system, but in the meantime, the call should go out for a charismatic leader, not a politician, to preach a gospel of hope and prosperity. I have said often America is in need of a revival. Part of that is spiritual. Part of that is in civics, in our leaders, in our institutions. We must look at policies, ideas, and attitudes that have failed us and we must demand better.

Why can't your African-American church leaders take care of it?  I'm a politician, and it's not my job to fix your poverty, but I'll sure as hell shame and scold you for it.

Nice.