StupidiNews!

• Cuba and the United States will officially open embassies in each other's respective capitals today and reestablish diplomatic ties for the first time in 54 years.
• Six months after a deadly attack on their offices, Paris satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will stop publishing cartoons that depict the Prophet Muhammad.
• President Obama officially sends the Iran nuclear deal to Congress today, the deal would require a veto-proof two-thirds majority in the House and Senate to stop.
• Greek banks will reopen today after three weeks as Athens has authorized the first payment to EU creditors after last week's tentative bailout agreement was reached.
• US students have won the International Mathematical Olympiad for the first time in 21 years, beating teams from China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

Last Call For The White Walkers

There seems to be more than a little smart money on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker emerging victorious from the rubble and claiming the 2016 GOP nomination.  Here's a not so gentle reminder of what a White Walker presidency would turn into.

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker had a steep learning curve on foreign policy after some early off-key statements. Now an eager student of global affairs, is staking out positions that play well to conservatives but lack a lot of nuance.

This was clear from a weekend bus tour the Wisconsin governor took across Iowa and earlier stops in South Carolina as part of the campaign swing he took in the week after becoming the 15th candidate to seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

He saw no need for diplomatic niceties in response to the Iran nuclear deal that President Barack Obama negotiated with Tehran: He would terminate it as soon as possible and persuade U.S. allies to join Washington in imposing more crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.

“This is not a country we should be doing business with,” he said in Davenport, Iowa, reminding the crowd of Iran’s holding of 52 American hostages in 1979. “This is one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism.”

Walker would also be more confrontational with both Russia over its aggression against Ukraine and against China, for the territorial pressures Beijing is putting on U.S. allies in the South China Sea.

He would dramatically increase U.S. military spending after budget cuts that military officials have complained about.

“The United States needs a foreign policy that puts steel in the face of our enemies,” Walker says.

Steel in the face of our enemies, meaning Iran, China and Russia.  Going to take a lot of cuts to schools, health care and roads to pay for all those troops going overseas under a Walker administration, you know.  I hope you weren't attached to Social Security or having your kids not go to war.

But hey, we'll sure be scary out there.  It's not like our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan had massive blowback, right?

By the way, Scott Walker has a number of things that he doesn't think he should have an opinion on, because that's too hard.

In a weekend interview with Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker about whether the Boy Scouts should allow gay troop leaders, CNN's Dana Bash asked Walker, "Do you think being gay is a choice?"

"I don't have an opinion on every single issue out there. To me, that's, I don't know," Walker answered. "I don't know the answer to that question."

Going to war with our "enemies" is easy.  Gay scoutmasters? Too hard for a President to have to worry about.

Scott Walker.

Great Scott, Marty!

It's good to know that one of my favorite movie franchises will be back after 30 years.

Where we’re going, we don’t need home entertainment systems.

Buckle up and get your flux capacitor firing, because the Back to the Future trilogy is headed back to the big screen on Oct. 21 for a one-night event. (Go here for more details.) Universal made the announcement in London on Friday, where the trilogy’s cast — including stars Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Lea Thompson — reunited for a 30th anniversary celebration of the franchise’s first film. The Robert Zemeckis-directed flick was the highest-grossing film of 1985.

The date of the re-release marks the exact date that Marty McFly, Fox’s time-hopping teenager, landed in Back to the Future Part II, a film that saw him zip ahead in time to rescue his future family. The world isn’t exactly like the film predicted — Jaws 19 won’t be playingand the theater won’t be called a Holomax — but any world in which Marty and Co. are back in theaters is a good one.

Hopefully this will be playing in the Cincy area and I can go catch this.  The series still stands up today as one of the more beloved sci-fi popcorn romps, and it'll be good to see it once again.

Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Michael J. Fox reunited (Instagram)

If I can't make it, well there's always the 30th anniversary Blu-Ray collection.

For those who can’t make it out to the theaters on Oct. 21— or just want to spend life stuck in a perpetual (and delightful) time loop — the franchise is being released in a brand new box set that comes in a collectible, light-up Flux Capacitor packaging. The package is stocked with extras, including bonus features, documentaries, a vinyl soundtrack, a 64-page book, and the entire Back to the Future: The Animated Series.

Count me in on that regardless.

Sunday Long Read: Rocking And Rolling In Eugene

This week's Sunday Long Read is an unsubtle reminder that California's infamous San Andreas fault (and bad movies starring The Rock) is not where seismologists and geologists expect America's next disastrous earthquake: it's the fault zone north of there covering the Pacific Northwest from coastal far northern California up to Vancouver Island, known as the Cascadia subduction zone.

Take your hands and hold them palms down, middle fingertips touching. Your right hand represents the North American tectonic plate, which bears on its back, among other things, our entire continent, from One World Trade Center to the Space Needle, in Seattle. Your left hand represents an oceanic plate called Juan de Fuca, ninety thousand square miles in size. The place where they meet is the Cascadia subduction zone. Now slide your left hand under your right one. That is what the Juan de Fuca plate is doing: slipping steadily beneath North America. When you try it, your right hand will slide up your left arm, as if you were pushing up your sleeve. That is what North America is not doing. It is stuck, wedged tight against the surface of the other plate. 

Without moving your hands, curl your right knuckles up, so that they point toward the ceiling. Under pressure from Juan de Fuca, the stuck edge of North America is bulging upward and compressing eastward, at the rate of, respectively, three to four millimetres and thirty to forty millimetres a year. It can do so for quite some time, because, as continent stuff goes, it is young, made of rock that is still relatively elastic. (Rocks, like us, get stiffer as they age.) But it cannot do so indefinitely. There is a backstop—the craton, that ancient unbudgeable mass at the center of the continent—and, sooner or later, North America will rebound like a spring. If, on that occasion, only the southern part of the Cascadia subduction zone gives way—your first two fingers, say—the magnitude of the resulting quake will be somewhere between 8.0 and 8.6.That’s the big one. If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2. That’s the very big one. 

Flick your right fingers outward, forcefully, so that your hand flattens back down again. When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries. Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. (Watch what your fingertips do when you flatten your hand.) The water will surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the earthquake begins. By the time the shaking has ceased and the tsunami has receded, the region will be unrecognizable. Kenneth Murphy, who directs FEMA’s Region X, the division responsible for Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska, says, “Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast.” 

In the Pacific Northwest, everything west of Interstate 5 covers some hundred and forty thousand square miles, including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Eugene, Salem (the capital city of Oregon), Olympia (the capital of Washington), and some seven million people. When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America. Roughly three thousand people died in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake. Almost two thousand died in Hurricane Katrina. Almost three hundred died in Hurricane Sandy. FEMA projects that nearly thirteen thousand people will die in the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. Another twenty-seven thousand will be injured, and the agency expects that it will need to provide shelter for a million displaced people, and food and water for another two and a half million. “This is one time that I’m hoping all the science is wrong, and it won’t happen for another thousand years,” Murphy says.

And all that isn't even the terrifying part.  The truly scary part is that the Pacific Northwest is nowhere near prepared enough to handle a 9.0+ quake, particularly Oregon.  Do read the whole thing, it's worse than any disaster movie you've seen.

Last Call For Wesley Clark's Mind

General Wesley Clark at one time was on the short list of veeps for President Obama and ran in 2004 for a short while, he won the Oklahoma Democratic primary even, and he has been a voice of sanity on US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That reign of sanity apparently ended on Friday as his interview with MSNBC's Thomas Roberts was shocking.

We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We've got to cut this off at the beginning. There are always a certain number of young people who are alienated. They don't get a job, they lost a girlfriend, their family doesn't feel happy here and we can watch the signs of that. And there are members of the community who can reach out to those people and bring them back in and encourage them to look at their blessings here.

But I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists. They do have an ideology. In World War II if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn't say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.

So, if these people are radicalized and they don't support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States, as a matter of principle fine. It's their right and it's our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict. And I think we're going to have to increasingly get tough on this, not only in the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures. 

To be frank here, Gen. Clark is, at minimum, saying we need to round up "radical Muslims" who disagree with the US government and put them in a place like Gitmo.  At worst case, he is openly calling for Muslim internment camps.

This is insanity, and this is verbatim what Gen. Clark has said after Thursday's awful shooting in Chattanooga, that we need to start rounding up Muslims wholesale.

Get this asshole over to the Republican side where he belongs.  This is deep into Malkinvania and for a Democrat to go there is unacceptable.

Driving Away The Madness

Before self-driving cars become a commercial reality, automakers and tech companies are going to have to prove to lawmakers at the state level that these vehicles can handle all kinds of conditions while ruthlessly obeying traffic laws and speed limits all the time, every time.  But the unintended consequences of that on cities and local governments is that excellent drivers don't get tickets needed to fill city fund coffers.

Once the car’s in charge, it’s a safe bet we won’t do things like speed, run reds, park illegally, or drive drunk. And that means we won’t be fined for doing those things. That’s going to put the squeeze on city budgets, according to a Brookings Institution report.

“Local governments have viewed their sources of revenue and planned around revenue from the perspective of, ‘We can tax people in a very structured and predictable manner,'” says Kevin Desouza, an Arizona State University and one of the report’s authors. They can count on catching us breaking the law often enough to keep the money flowing. But once that’s passed, “they’re going to lose out in the long run.”

There are no national numbers indicating how much American drivers shell out in traffic violation fines, but the report puts the total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Los Angeles, for example, collected $161 million from parking tickets in 2014. Twenty cities in California take in $40 million every year from towing cars, splitting that money with the tow companies.

On top of that, if the theory that self-driving cars will lead people to own fewer cars holds up, revenue from registration fees will drop as well.

Again, great news for people who don’t like, or can’t afford, paying fines and fees. But that money finances things like transportation infrastructure and maintenance, public schools, judicial salaries, domestic violence advocacy, conservation, and many other public services, the report notes.

Meanwhile, we’ll still expect our cities to pay to keep the roads in good shape, since no matter who’s driving, potholes stink.

And that's actually a big issue.  We've critically underfunded road infrastructure for years, and with Republicans in charge of Congress and many state legislatures, there's no way that will ever get fixed.  Without revenue for roads, there may not be anything for self-driving cars to drive on.

Remember President Obama coming to Cincy for his infrastructure bill four years ago?  That bill died pretty quickly and our bridges and roads are in even worse shape now.

Eventually taxpayers will end up paying for them, one way or another.

The Fix Is In, The Jig Is Up

That badly edited hit job video on Planned Parenthood has had its intended effect, raising massive outrage among the anti-choice goons and providing easy political points for "deeply concerned" Republicans like Bobby Jindal, who ordered a state investigation into Planned Parenthood earlier this week.

But Jindal isn't the only GOP governor looking to score some easy points on a fake story, Georgia's GOP Gov. Nathan Deal wants a piece of this action too.

Gov. Nathan Deal ordered a review of Planned Parenthood and its five clinics in Georgia on Thursday after an undercover video by an anti-abortion group accused the group of illegally selling body parts of aborted fetuses. 

Deal’s office said in a statement that the Department of Community Health and the Department of Public Health will jointly review the clinics in Georgia to “ensure the horrific practice is not occurring here.” He was quickly seconded by Attorney General Sam Olens, who also offered to probe the “alarming allegations of horrendous practices.” 

It’s the latest aftershock of a secretly-recorded video that shows an executive working for the reproductive health group discussing harvesting body parts from aborted fetuses. Republican-run committees in the U.S. House and Senate have vowed to investigate the issue as well, and hearings are likely soon. 

Staci Fox, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood Southeast, said the regional organization doesn’t provide tissue donation services. But she said it’s standard practice in the medical community to donate tissue for scientific research and receive reimbursement for expenses such as transportation costs. 

“These charges are completely false, and they are based on politics,” said Fox, who said she will cooperate fully with the inquest. “These medical issues shouldn’t be politicized in this way. Georgians want our elected officials focused on solutions, not making more problems.”

So yes, this is a deliberate effort to drown Planned Parenthood and "defund" the organization.  It failed a few years ago when James O' Keefe tried it, but apparently this attempt may be somewhat more successful.

By the way, if you're wondering how the Republicans jumped on this so quickly, it's because this entire screw job was planned well in advance.

Republican lawmakers knew about a viral Planned Parenthood "sting video" well before it was released Tuesday, CQ Roll Call is reporting.

Since the video -- which appears to show a Planned Parenthood medical official discussing how abortion providers typically go about procuring fetal tissue for researchers -- was released, congressional leaders have called for an investigation into the claims raised by the group behind the video. Abortion foes say the video reveals that Planned Parenthood is selling the organs of aborted fetuses.

At least two members of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus admitted to CQ Roll Call that they had seen the video before its public release. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), pictured above, said he saw the video a month ago but didn't act on its supposed revelations immediately because "the hope was to have as much information as possible so that the authorities could be notified effectively before the media."

And of course the plan was always to use the "shocking video" as a catalyst for the GOP War on Women.

“The gravity of the situation most definitely” changes things, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told POLITICO Thursday. “This is not just Republicans. It’s independents. It’s Democrats…. Americans don’t want their tax dollars spent doing what they’re doing.”

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his two top deputies — McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) — called for investigations almost immediately after the controversial video was made public, including whether it profits off fetal body parts. And within 24 hours, at least two powerful committees had announced probes on the issue. 

McCarthy is already talking about defunding the organization through the appropriations process. And in the Senate, GOP leaders who have been eyeing a vote on legislation banning abortions after 20 weeks of gestation say this will give them momentum to clear the bill later this session. 

“I think it really probably enhances the prospects of something like that passing right now,” South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the third-ranking Senate Republican, said Thursday. “I think that’s such an egregious, awful, horrible example out there, which I think just elevates the importance of addressing it. So I think it probably helps the bill.”

Why, one would be forgiven for believing that this was an organized attempt to destroy Planned Parenthood and pass a national abortion ban with a veto-proof majority by generating outrage on purpose.

Hell, my own jackass of a senator Rand Paul is now using this drummed-up outrage to block the federal highway bill.

Sen. Rand Paul is the latest lawmaker to throw a wrench into delicate transportation bill negotiations, suggesting he might hold up the legislation over the controversial Planned Parenthood video that surfaced this week.

The Kentucky Republican and presidential candidate released multiple statements Friday promising to use “all legislative vehicles” to “defeat and defund Planned Parenthood” next week. The statements on his Senate and campaign websites don’t directly mention the pending highway and transit legislation, but it is the next big-ticket item on the Senate’s to-do list, with a procedural vote set for Tuesday.

“The recent revelation that this taxpayer-funded organization is selling body parts of the unborn further proves that this agency deserves our scorn not our tax dollars,” he said in a statement. “I plan to do whatever I can to stop them and will introduce an amendment to pending Senate legislation to immediately strip every dollar of Planned Parenthood funding.”

We'll see.  Again, if safe, legal abortions are simply unavailable, then abortions are still going to happen, the difference is a lot more women will die in the process.  But this has all the hallmarks of revenge against a President and the people who voted for them.  Republicans lost huge issues in the last 30 days on Obamacare, same-sex marriage, the Confederate flag and now Iran, and now they want to make sure liberals lose big too.  The goal now is to punish the Obama coalition, starting with women (who just happen to be the most important part of the Hillary coalition, pure coincidence I'm sure.)

And that's the point.

Last Call For Exceptionally Stupid

Republicans want to codify into law the ability to claim religious exceptions to marrying same-sex couples, but as usual they're so awful at legislating that the bill would allow people to claim religious exceptions to break a multitude of laws, including existing protections for pregnant women in the workplace.

In wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage, Republicans are pushing legislation that aims to protect Americans who oppose these unions on religious grounds. But critics say the language is so broad, the bill creates a license to discriminate that would let employers fire women for getting pregnant outside of wedlock.

The First Amendment Defense Act prohibits the federal government from taking discriminatory action against a person -- which is defined to include for-profit corporations -- acting in accordance with a religious belief that favors so-called traditional marriage. This means the feds can't revoke a nonprofit's tax-exempt status or end a company's federal contract over this issue.

The bill specifically protects those who believe that marriage is between "one man and one woman" or that "sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage." Ian Thompson, a legislative representative at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that in addition to targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, the bill "clearly encompasses discrimination against single mothers" and would hobble the ability of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal body that protects women from sex-based discrimination, to act.

This scenario isn't merely hypothetical. There are a number of recent cases where religious schools have fired unwed teachers for becoming pregnant. A Montana Catholic school teacher who was fired for having a baby out of wedlock, for example, filed a discrimination charge last year with the EEOC. While the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized a ministerial exception to employment discrimination laws, that exception is somewhat limited, not necessarily covering educators employed by Catholic schools who teach about exclusively secular subjects.

James Ryan, a spokesman for the EEOC, said the commission could not comment on pending legislation in Congress.

Nice folks, the party of  "we want you to have the ability to fire people because they had sex without being married."

Keep it up, GOP.

Reality Trumps Fantasy Once Again

Why no, Donald Trump isn't going to "win the Hispanic vote" any more than he's going to be our next President.

Hispanic voters overwhelmingly disapprove of Donald Trump’s controversial comments on illegal immigration, according to a new Univision poll. 

Seventy nine percent of Hispanic voters polled find Trump’s comments offensive, and 71 percent hold an unfavorable view of Trump.

While a majority of those polled say they don’t think Trump’s comments represent his party, Trump and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush trail Hillary Clinton badly among Hispanic voters. 

Clinton would win 64 percent of Hispanic voters over Bush in a hypothetical matchup. That includes a five point lead in Bush’s home state of Florida, a 42-point lead in Nevada, a 14-point lead in North Carolina, and a 46-point lead in Colorado—all swing states. 

She’d fare even better in a matchup against Trump, where she wins the Hispanic vote by a 70 to 16 percentage point margin.

So the real news isn't that Trump will lost the Hispanic vote by 54 points to Hillary, it's that Jeb! Bush would lose to Hillary by nearly 40 points too. Trump is nowhere near alone at completely losing the Hispanic vote. She demolished Ted Cruz by 47 points, Marco Rubio by 41 points, Rand Paul by 47 points, and Scott Walker by 49 points.

President Obama beat Mitt by 42 points in 2012, and I expect the GOP will fare even worse this time around.

Post-Racial America Update

Oklahomans showed President Obama this week precisely what they thought of him when he came to visit the state to talk about federal prison reform.

Supporters of the confederate flag have their own message to send to President Obama.
In Durant this morning, trucks lined up awaiting his arrival, and now supporters are in Bricktown. 

Supporters want to let the President know the Confederate flag, they say, stands for heritage, not hate. The organizer of the event is someone you might not expect to see standing behind this cause. 

Its a red, white and blue that, for many, carries a message of hate… but that’s not the point these folks want to get across. 

“We don’t believe it’s a symbol of racism,” Andrew Duncomb, an organizer who calls himself “the Black Rebel” says. 

“Hell, I’m just out here supporting my flag, not racists, I don’t want no problems with anybody,” a supporter said. 

A message contrary to the thousands gathering weeks earlier in South Carolina to remove the very same flag. 

“They’re blaming the racist problems on the flag and not on the real problems of America. Through the race lies the people who carry and harbor the hate inside,” Duncomb says.

Yeah, showing up to greet this president with Confederate flags waving high.  Classy move, Sooners. Next time get hoods, yes?

Also points for finding that one black guy that thinks the flag is okay, so that it somehow obliterates the value of the tens of millions of Americans who are embarrassed and upset at what that flag of actual, literal traitors to our country means.

Good think racism is over, right?

StupidiNews!

• Aurora, Colorado theater shooter James Holmes has been found guilty on 135 counts as a jury returned the verdict after just 13 hours of deliberation.
• Typhoon Nangka is on a collision course with the Japanese mainland as authorities are urging as many as 350,000 residents to evacuate from the storm's path.
• Federal investigators are looking for motive behind yesterday's shootings in Chattanooga that killed four Marines at a recruitment center and wounded another Marine and a police officer.
• International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde is warning European leaders that Greece will need more debt relief in order to keep the eurozone intact.
• An Ohio man has been arrested after filming the fatal auto accident scene of two teens from inside the vehicle and posting the footage to Facebook.

Last Call For The Republican Legal Rump

A new USA TODAY poll shows that most Americans believe that June's Supreme Court decisions have put an end to the Obamacare and marriage equality fights.

Well, I take that back.  Republicans are going to fight for bigotry and being uninsured forever.

By 52%-36%, those polled say officials who oppose the Affordable Care Act should take steps to improve the law but end efforts to repeal it, given the high court's decision rejecting its most serious legal challenge. But Republicans by more than 2-1, 63%-27%, say the campaign to overturn the law should continue. 

On same-sex marriage, Americans by 51%-33% say local and state officials now should allow gay couples to wed in their jurisdictions even if they oppose gay marriage. On that, Republicans also tend to disagree: 49% say officials who oppose same-sex unions should take steps to resist the court's ruling and block them while 38% say they should allow them to take place. 

The issue of gay marriage in particular seems to have lost some of its potential to affect next year's presidential election. Four in 10 say the issue will have no impact on their vote.

So yeah, half of Republicans want to show their "civil disobedience" bigoted intolerance towards same-sex marriage, and two-thirds want to take health insurance away from millions of people.

Please make overturning marriage equality and Obamacare the central theme of the GOP in 2016, guys.  Democrats are begging you to try that. Please remaind everyone how mean-spirited and awful Republicans really are, and do it as often as possible between now and November 2016.

Just begging you.

Tragedy In Chattanooga

A pretty horrific event in Chattanooga, Tennessee this afternoon as a gunman opened fire on a series of military recruitment centers in the city.  The gunman is dead, as are four Marines, and a police officer has also been injured.

Four people plus a gunman were killed in shootings at multiple military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the city's mayor announced at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

A police officer who was shot in the leg remained in stable condition at a local hospital, according to NBC’s Chattanooga affiliate WRBC. 

The attacks took place at the Naval and Marine Reserve Center on Amnicola highway and the Army Recruiting Center on Lee highway. 

Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke announced earlier today that there had been a “horrific incident in our community."

The fact that the gunman went to multiple recruitment centers for different branches of the US military doesn't really leave any room for doubt that these recruitment centers, and the personnel inside them, were being targeted deliberately.  Somebody had a definite problem with our men and women in uniform, enough to open fire on multiple recruitment centers over it.  This was a planned, domestic terrorist attack in my eyes, and the FBI is treating it as such until they otherwise have reason not to do so, according to the news conference.

JUST IN: Chattanooga, TN shooting suspect identified as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, law enforcement sources tell @CBSNews.

— CBSN (@CBSNLive) July 16, 2015

More on this as it comes in.

Bobbying For Crapples

So on Tuesday, a heavily edited hit video was posted to YouTube, purported to show a Planned Parenthood employee discuss using late-term abortions to harvest baby parts.  Which is kind of odd, since 1) Planned Parenthood doesn't do late-term abortions (only 4 clinics in the US do period) and 2) the video is a screaming fake from the James O'Keefe School Of Complete Horsecrap.

But that's not stopping Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal from using the fake video as an excuse to harass Planned Parenthood and score cheap points.

Gov. Bobby Jindal on Tuesday announced he's directed the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to investigate Planned Parenthood activities in the state after a video surfaced that claims the organization is selling fetal body parts. 

The video, which was posted to YouTube by the Center for Medical Progress, shows a woman discussing the harvest of fetal organs and body parts from partial-birth abortions. The Center for Medical Progress identifies the woman as Dr. Deborah Nucatola, who is Planned Parenthood Federation of America's national medical director. 

There was no indication that the video or the activities described in it had ties to Louisiana. But Jindal said he was ordering an investigation in part because Planned Parenthood is planning to open a clinic in New Orleans.

But here's the kicker (and the real reason why Jindal is pretending to believe this nonsense):

The investigation means the $4 million clinic planned for New Orleans will not be able to open because Jindal's order includes suspending the issuance of new licenses by DHH.

So yes, Jindal is a manipulative slimy bastard.  Oh, and where is he getting the money to investigate Planned Parenthood when the state is running a $1.6 billion deficit under his budget?

And he's running for President!?!?

My guess is he won't be for much longer when this blows up in his face.

StupidiNews!

• Swiss officials say that they will extradite a FIFA official to the US, the unnamed official of soccer's governing body is cooperating with law enforcement and agreed to be extradited.
• Congressional Democrats are coming out in support of the Iranian nuclear deal as Republicans continue to vow to destroy the accord.
• Former President George HW Bush is in stable condition after fracturing a bone in his neck in a fall, he is expected to recover and be in a neck brace for some time.
• Greek lawmakers have voted to accept the EU bailout deal imposing harsh austerity measures, the first 7 billion euro installment to be announced today.
• Netflix says it will support the proposed Charter/Time Warner Cable merger after the cable giants offered the streaming movie service a free network connection to its customers.