StupidiNews!

• In Somalia, Al-Shabaab militants are claiming responsibility for killing seven near the city of Garowe, including four UNICEF aid workers.
• Australian officials have announced an end to accepting religious-based exemptions for vaccinations, saying the public health risk outweighs the benefits.
• EU foreign ministers are meeting in Luxembourg to discuss the mounting refugee crisis after this weekend's deadly boat capsize that killed as many as 700 migrants fleeing Libya.
• Finland's Center Party, led by millionaire engineer Juha Sipila, has triumphed in national elections and will attempt to form a government to rescue Helsinki's moribund economy.
• The US Justice Department is expected to file an anti-trust lawsuit to block the proposed Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger.

Last Call For Riding Dirty

I guess it's time to add "riding a bicycle" to the long, long list of things that will get you pulled over by a cop for doing when you're black. The Tampa Bay Times:

The Times analyzed more than 10,000 bicycle tickets Tampa police issued in the past dozen years. The newspaper found that even though blacks make up about a quarter of the city's population, they received 79 percent of the bike tickets.

Some riders have been stopped more than a dozen times through the years, and issued as many as 17 tickets. Some have been ticketed three times in one day.

It's possible blacks in some areas use bicycles more than whites. But that's not what's driving the disparity.

Police are targeting certain high-crime neighborhoods and nitpicking cyclists as a way to curb crime. They hope they will catch someone with a stolen bike or with drugs or that they will scare thieves away.

"This is not a coincidence," said Police Chief Jane Castor. "Many individuals receiving bike citations are involved in criminal activity."

She said her department has done such a good job curbing auto theft that bikes have "become the most common mode of transportation for criminals."

Many of the tickets did go to convicted criminals, including some people interviewed for this story. And there are cases where police stopped someone under suspicious circumstances and found a gun or caught a burglar.

But most bike stops that led to a ticket turned up no illegal activity; only 20 percent of adults ticketed last year were arrested.

When police did arrest someone, it was almost always for a small amount of drugs or a misdemeanor like trespassing.

Ordinances that mysteriously don't get enforced for bicycle riders in the nicer neighborhoods of Tampa Bay, only the black ones. 

Weird how that works.

Burning Up The Charts

Another month, another global temperature record, as 2015 is proving to be even hotter across Earth than record-setting 2014 was.

Last month the average global temperature was the highest recorded for March since record keeping began in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Friday.

Average global temperature, including both land and ocean surfaces, was 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit (0.85 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average.

“Record warm temperatures continued to dominate in the northeast Pacific Ocean and were also notable in the southwest Pacific and parts of the Arctic Seas to the north and northwest of Scandinavia,” NOAA said in its report. “Overall, every major ocean basin had at least some areas with record warmth and large areas with much warmer-than-average temperatures.”

The first quarter of this year, from January to March, had already broken records. It was the hottest such period in the administration’s 136-year archive.

But remember, global warming is a myth, all the world's climate scientists are involved in a massive conspiracy to deceive you, it's really a major hoax to impose a new world order and destroy the world's economies, and only the Republican Party can save you from it.

Or, you know, we could lower carbon emissions. One of these two paths is the truth.  So far, America has overwhelmingly decided on path number one.

Sunday Long Read: Disappeared Like Magic

Your Sunday long read this week is Jonathan Abrams and his essential piece at Grantland on the mid-90's era Orlando Magic.  The team, led by the duo of Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway, should have won three, maybe four NBA titles.  Instead they imploded and ended one of the biggest duds in NBA history.

They were destined for greatness. Back in the mid-1990s, you couldn’t imagine a more promising basketball pairing than the Orlando Magic’s Shaquille O’Neal and Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway. O’Neal was powerful and agile, plus swift and skillful in a way that hadn’t been seen in a 7-footer since Wilt Chamberlain (and hasn’t been seen since O’Neal retired). Hardaway was seen as the rightful heir to Magic Johnson — a tall, transcendent point guard who would headline the new generation of NBA superstars. If you wanted to build an ideal basketball team, you would start with a center and a point guard. If you wanted to build the perfect team, you would start with O’Neal and Hardaway. The Magic, only a few years removed from their lowly expansion-team origins, skyrocketed to fame with their abundant talent and black-and-white pinstripes. O’Neal and Hardaway were surrounded by capable role players like Dennis Scott, Brian Shaw, Nick Anderson, and Horace Grant. Together, they seemed poised to become the NBA’s next dynasty. 

Perhaps no NBA team has ever featured two players more marketable than O’Neal and Hardaway. The two filmed Blue Chips together and became dueling campaign faces for Nike and Reebok. O’Neal had his wide smile and an outsize personality to match his towering physique. Hardaway was more reserved, but possessed that unforgettable nickname and a Chris Rock–voiced alter ego to talk trash for him. The possibilities seemed endless, as if the championship rings and parades would be a formality.

And then it ended. The Magic’s competitive window slammed shut faster than anyone imagined, thanks to O’Neal’s unexpected departure to Los Angeles, the firing of Magic coach Brian Hill, and the decline of Hardaway’s game thanks to knee injuries. It took years for the franchise to build another competitive team, and even though the Dwight Howard–led Magic reached the NBA Finals in 2009, the pride mixed with disappointment from 1995 and ’96 remained strong. 

The Shaq and Penny Magic are in an unfortunate class similar to the ’70s Blazers,’80s Rockets, or 2000s Kings — a story of unfulfilled potential and a dynasty that never was. “We were just having so much fun playing the game,” Scott said. “We weren’t really thinking about making history or understanding how good we really could be. All that stuff was happening so fast.”

Penny and Shaq. Shaq and Penny. For a brief time — they played only three seasons together — most of the NBA believed no one could stop them.

I remember the Shaq and Penny-era Magic pretty fondly throughout college. They were the next coming of Jordan and Pippen Bulls or the Rodman and Thomas "Bad Boys" Pistons and then everything melted down.  They were exciting and cool and awesome, and then they were gone.

Give the story a read, it's a good one, even by Grantland standards.

Last Call For Working The Refs

Peeking over the fence at what conservatives are up to is something of a necessary occupational hazard in this gig, but every now and then you catch something informative, disturbing, and flagrant.  This time around it's our old friend Cap'n Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, reviewing of all things, NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd appearing as a guest on the internet-based talk show of conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt.

The transcript falls into that informative, disturbing, and flagrant pile.

HH: The former Secretary of State installed a homebrew server. What was your reaction upon learning of that, as a technology executive aware of the security challenges of maintaining privacy and security?

CF: Well, I had two reactions. One was that clearly, she had a plan to shield her communications.

HH: Chuck Todd, Trey Gowdy came on the show as well and said he’s going to subpoena her if she doesn’t show up. And then he’s going to subpoena Huma Abedin and Sidney Blumenthal and Cheryl Mills. How big of an issue, we’ve got 45 seconds, is this server going to be?

CT: Look, I think it’s a huge issue. I’m sorry. I think it’s why those trust, those honest and trustworthy numbers were the way they were. We talked about this last week. I used those numbers on the show on Sunday.

HH: Yeah.

CT: I think this is, it brought back all of the Clinton demons that swing voters are uncomfortable with.

HH: And she doesn’t, she didn’t take any questions this week to dispel those, did she?

CT: No, and all, and can I just say this week, she had a golden opportunity to come across unscripted and truly out of her bubble. She created opportunities for herself, and then didn’t take them. I just say this was a perplexing week.

HH: Very.

CT: …watching her. They did very well on day one, and then sort of swung and missed every other day.

Now, this is the supposedly neutral (if not FLAMING EVIL LIBERAL if you ask most conservatives) Chuck Todd just trashing Hillary Clinton here.  Todd clearly seems to believe that if he's a guest on someone else's political roundup show, he's a pundit and not the host of Meet The Press.  That's one thing.

The other is Chuck Todd clearly does not like Hillary Clinton, and believes she's in a lot of trouble, sounding very much like, well, Hugh Hewitt.

Keep that in mind next time you hear Chuck Todd proclaim that he can't ask tough questions on his show because otherwise newsmakers won't come on.

Selling Evitability

When's the last time you can remember a party chair going out of their way to promise that a clear front runner would face not only multiple primary challengers but debates as well?

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) says she's still planning for primary debates, in expectation of a challenge to presidential contender Hillary Clinton.

“I expect the voters who believe we should have a Democratic primary will get their wish,” Wasserman Schultz told C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” during a video interview from Manchester, N.H.

Party officials were thus mapping out a “series of sanctioned debates that we expect our presidential candidates to participate in,” she added.Wasserman Schultz said she had already spoken with Clinton, the clear Democratic frontrunner, and other likely candidates about a possible primary down the road.

Clinton, who announced her run last Sunday, remains the only official Democratic candidate. A number of others though have said they are weighing a run.

The DNC chairwoman mentioned Vice President Biden, former Gov. Martin O’Malley (Md.), former Sen. Jim Webb (Va.) and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chaffee as other likely contenders.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), she added, would be a welcome entrant provided he switched party affiliations for the primary.

Wasserman Schultz was in New Hampshire scouting the GOP’s field of 2016 candidates. Most of the likely Republican contenders are visiting the Granite State this weekend.

If I didn't know better, I'd say Wasserman Schultz was selling a fight card.

And maybe that's not such a terrible idea.

It's Still The Economy, Stupid

Ed Kilgore notes that Americans are feeling a lot better about President Obama's performance when it comes to the economy, and if that keeps up it could help Dems across the board in November 2016.

This new finding from Bloomberg Politics’ polling (as reported by Margaret Talev) is a pretty big deal, assuming it holds up as a trend: 

Americans are becoming more optimistic about the country’s economic prospects by several different measures. President Barack Obama’s handling of the economy is being seen more positively than negatively for the first time in more than five years, 49 percent to 46 percent—his best number in this poll since September 2009.

Here’s the under-side of that optimism, though: 

[T]he national survey of 1,008 adults, conducted April 6-8, also reveals that about three-fourths of Democrats and independents, along with a majority of Republicans, say the gap is growing between the rich and everyone else—and a majority of women want the government to intervene to shrink it. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

So it may well be that Hillary Clinton’s talk about inequality isn’t just a response to progressives unhappy with Obama’s “centrism,” but a theme we’ll be hearing more of both from her and from Obama himself as the obvious thing for a left-of-center pol to talk about when the overall direction of the economy is looking better. It also probably means that we’ll hear Republicans continue their awkward efforts to suggest shrinking government will unleash upward mobility. All in all, optimism about what a Democratic president is doing plus concerns traditionally associated with Democrats is a pretty good public opinion backdrop for a Democratic non-incumbent.

Meanwhile, Republicans like Chris Christie and Rand Paul are still talking about massive cuts to programs like SNAP, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and of course eliminating the Affordable Care Act and putting millions back into the category of uninsured.

That's a fight that Democrats will win.

Last Call For Jeb's Dead Ringer

Like, zoiks, Scoob! Jeb Bush is talking about d-d-d-d-death panels!

Jeb Bush, defending his efforts to keep alive Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman, when he was governor of Florida, suggested on Friday that patients on Medicare should be required to sign advance directives dictating their care if they become incapacitated. 

A similar proposal by President Obama — that doctors should be paid to advise patients on end-of-life decisions — became a political firestorm in 2009, when Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate, claimed that the legislation would give bureaucrats the power to decide if some frail or disabled people were deserving of medical care. The assertion was shown to be false. 

In 2010, Medicare tried to add a regulation that would permit “voluntary advance care planning” during yearly checkups. But after an uproar, President Obama’s administration pushed to drop that provision. 

Mr. Bush’s suggestion that advance directives be required under Medicare showed how much public opinion has shifted on the subject since.

Oh it has, huh. Or maybe, Maggie Haberman, IOKIYAR.

So death panels are now a totally cool thing called “Medicare end-of-life directives.” I’m sure this won’t be the last thing that President Obama proposed and was destroyed by media pissing and moaning that Jebya here will be able to get away with.

Wonder why that is.

Boot Strapped For Cash

While the good news is graduation rates for high school students are increasing, particularly for black and Latino students, those who are dropping out are increasingly doing so to get jobs in order to help their families.

Using data from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey, researchers at the Urban Institute found that nearly a third of the 563,000 teenage dropouts left school to work. These 16- to 18-year-olds were disproportionately male and Hispanic, and ended their education either at the beginning of high school or nearing the end. Roughly 75 percent of them are native-born Americans, the new study said. 

Granted, high school graduation rates among Hispanic students has climbed in recent years, with 75 percent receiving a diploma in 2013 compared to 71 percent two years earlier, according to the latest data from the Education Department. Still, young Hispanic men are at high risk of leaving school to work, the Urban Institute study found. 

Six out of 10 of the teenagers identified in the study earned less than $10,000 a year working in restaurants, on construction sites, cleaning buildings, among other things. A third of the kids contribute more than 20 percent of the total annual income of their households, a tenth contributed more than 50 percent, the study said.

It's pretty awful that with Republicans doing everything they can to limit help to the working poor, that we've gotten to the point where a third of high school dropouts are doing so in order to earn money to support their families.  Kids are giving up high school education just to help keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.  We're forcing kids to do that now in the name of "smaller government".

It's shameful, but then again an uneducated workforce is exactly what Republicans want.

Sing A Song Of Slick Pence, Pocket Full Of Lies

Indiana is reportedly looking to spend millions in taxpayer money on rehabilitating its battered image after the disaster that was the Republican-backed "religious freedom" law, and it looks like GOP Gov. Mike Pence could badly use some image consultants himself as his approval ratings have dropped like a rock since the bill's passage.

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) has seen a significant drop in his approval rating since signing a widely criticized "religious freedom" law, with one longtime political observer in the state saying the fall is historic for a governor. 

"I've been covering Indiana politics for three decades, and I don't recall a sitting governor experiencing that kind of decline over this short period of time like we've seen here," said Brian Howey, publisher of the widely respected site Howey Politics Indiana. 

A new HPI poll by pollster Christine Matthews of Bellwether Research shows Pence's favorable rating at just 35 percent, and his unfavorable rating at 38 percent. 

In 2013, an HPI poll found Pence faring much better than he is now. Then, he was at a 52 percent favorable rating and a 20 percent unfavorable rating. 

Fifty-nine percent of respondents in the new poll said the "religious freedom" law was unnecessary, compared to just 30 percent who thought it was needed. Another 50 percent said the controversy surrounding the law will have a "negative impact on the economy" even after it "isn't front page news." 

"In the 20 years that HPI has been publishing, and in the polling HPI has conducted since 2008, an Indiana governor has never experienced this kind of survey decline in this short time frame," Howey wrote in his newsletter Thursday.

In other words, Pence is rapidly becoming the Chris Christie of the Midwest (and without the charisma.)  Pence, should he run for re-election, would face a November 2016 vote.  Somehow I'm thinking Indiana Democrats might want to try to get together somebody to oppose him.

How about it, guys?

StupidiNews!

• New figures from human rights groups in Syria find the death toll in that country's civil war has doubled from last year, putting estimates at over 310,000 killed.
• Support for the death penalty in the US has dropped to a 40-year-low according to the latest Pew Research Center survey, down to 56%.
• Chinese journalist Gao Yu has been sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking state secrets to a book publisher in 2014.
• German and Greek officials are beginning to consider what would happen to the eurozone if Greece really did exit the euro currency.
• New Zealand internet mogul Kim Dotcom is in trouble with the law again and could face deportation, this time for driving 150kph in a 50kph zone.

Last Call For Operation Lynch Pinned

Why no, Senate Republicans are not going to allow a vote on Loretta Lynch as Attorney General, nor will they suffer any consequences for continuing to refuse to allow it. Why do you think they keep moving the goalposts?

Republican leaders have tied a vote on Lynch to the passage of an unrelated bill targeting sex trafficking. That bill, which normally would be bipartisan, has stalled for weeks because Republicans tucked an anti-abortion provision into it that Democrats won’t support. As long as the bill doesn’t move, neither does Lynch. 

“The Senate should pass this bipartisan bill right away,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said Tuesday. “And as soon as that happens, we’ll turn to the Loretta Lynch nomination.” 

But it’s not that simple, and there’s no end in sight to the abortion fight. The Senate is voting Thursday to take up an amendment that Republicans say is a way forward on the impasse, but Democrats call it a gimmick and vow to oppose it. 

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the bill’s author, will offer to tweak the bill’s language relating to the Hyde Amendment, the federal provision that bans the use of public funds for abortions except in cases of rape or incest. But the tweak doesn’t address Democrats’ core concern that the bill, for the first time, would expand the Hyde Amendment to apply to non-taxpayer funds. The bill would allow fees collected from human traffickers to be funneled into a new public fund for victims, to which the Hyde Amendment would be applied. 

Democrats say any expansion of the Hyde Amendment is a non-starter for them.
“Senate Republicans are trying to restrict the health choices of women and girls who have been sold into sex slavery,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). “The latest proposal from Senator Cornyn does nothing to change that fact. He is still attaching Hyde to non-taxpayer, offender dollars.”

So no, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have made it clear that until the Democrats fold on expanding Hyde to victims of human trafficking, Lynch will never get a vote. For now anyway the Dems are hanging in there, but Loretta Lynch is the one paying the price, and nobody seems to give a damn (certainly not the Villagers.)

But this is the extent that our “smaller government” friends on the other side of the aisle will go to in order to control women’s bodies. Not only do we have to further shame victims of modern slavery, we have to bring them in for judgment from a bunch of wrinkled old white guys too just to try to flip off President Mandingo Reallyfromkenya from even appointing people to his own cabinet.

Compassion, thy name is the Republican Party.

Republican Loyalty Israeli Up For Debate

If you want to know where years of Obama Derangement Syndrome has gotten us, then the latest Bloomberg Politics poll on Israel is a real eye-opener and more than a bit disturbing.

Israel has become a deeply partisan issue for ordinary Americans as well as for politicians in Washington, a shift that may represent a watershed moment in foreign policy and carry implications for domestic politics after decades of general bipartisan consensus.

Republicans by a ratio of more than 2-to-1 say the U.S. should support Israel even when its stances diverge with American interests, a new Bloomberg Politics poll finds. Democrats, by roughly the same ratio, say the opposite is true and that the U.S. must pursue its own interests over Israel's.

Further illustrating how sharply partisan the debate has become, Republicans say they feel more sympathetic to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu than to their own president, 67 percent to 16 percent, while Democrats are more sympathetic to President Barack Obama than to Israel's prime minister, 76 percent to 9 percent.

The latter I can understand, with FOX News and talk radio training Americans to openly hate their president on a daily basis.  But the former means two-thirds of Republicans are willing to commit nothing short of treason, and the notion (often repeated by these same Republicans) that we have to "take our country back" means something entirely more sinister in light of this information.

When your Obama Derangement Syndrome manifests in a desire to help a foreign ally undermine the United States government, you have a problem.  Republicans will tell you it's okay because hey, they don't recognize President Obama anyway (and hell they think he's actually the Antichrist.)

Gotta love modern GOP "patriotism".  Towards Israel, over America, because screw Obama.

Bibbidy Bobbidy Bible Belt

Looks like quite the First Amendment battle in Oklahoma as the state's Republican Attorney General is vowing to defend bibles in public schools from those mean ol' nasty separation of church and state people.

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has sent a letter to public school superintendents across the state vowing to defend religious freedom amid “veiled legal threats” over the distribution of Bibles on campus. 

“Few things are as sacred and as fundamental to Oklahomans as the constitutional rights of free speech and the free exercise of religion,” Pruitt wrote Tuesday. “It is a challenging time in our country for those who believe in religious liberty. Our religious freedoms are under constant attack from a variety of groups who seek to undermine our constitutional rights and threaten our founding principles.” 

Aaron Cooper, a spokesman, said Pruitt’s office is trying to determine the extent of contact between the Freedom From Religion Foundation and similar groups and Oklahoma school districts. From that information, legal training on the topic of religious freedom will be developed for public school officials, he said. 

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, or FFRF, responded Wednesday, sending Pruitt a letter saying they were "concerned about this misleading if not irresponsible advice." 

"It is obviously far easier for an Oklahoma student to get a bible than literature criticizing the bible, which FFRF will seek to pass out in every public school forum that is opened under your offer. If the goal of the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office is to allow public schools to be used to distribute atheist messages, then this is a brilliant idea," wrote foundation attorney Andrew Seidel. "FFRF prefers that public schools focus on education rather than serve as a venue for divisive religious debates. 

"Your letter was either grossly misinformed on both the facts and law—indeed recklessly misinformed given that school districts might heed your advice and open themselves up to serious legal and financial liability—or it was a transparent attempt to pander to people’s religious sensibilities for political gain."

The funny thing about the First Amendment's freedom to worship clause is that whole Establishment Clause thing.  The government cannot interfere in private worship, but neither can it advocate one religion over another.  That's why the whole "American is a Christian country" is nonsense, because the Constitution spells out the fact that we're not.  We have Christians, sure.  But there's no official state religion, nor should there be in a representative democracy.

The state Attorney General wanting to distribute bibles on school campuses and using the power of the state of Oklahoma to do so is unconstitutional on its face.

I welcome this fight, frankly.  Not even Scalia will tolerate this one.

StupidiNews!

• The British government is confirming that a WW II era shipwreck containing millions in silver was recovered in September 2013 and kept secret until now.
• Texas has executed its sixth death row inmate of the year after replenishing its supply of lethal injection drugs.
• Russia is again blaming the United States for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine's Crimea region, saying NATO overtures to Kiev "forced" Russia's hand in the matter.
• China is cracking down on illegal offshore accounts as the country attempts to rein in corruption and embezzlement.
• Los Angeles Unified School Distrtict want Apple to refund it millions in the district's now-failed plan to get iPads into every student's hands.