Last Call For Some Perspective

The indispensable Joe Sonka reminds us that the distance between today and November 7th is a political eternity:

Democrats cheer GOP nominating militaristic paranoid celebrity for president who polls show will be defeated easily pic.twitter.com/w1u4eF77gs

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) March 23, 2016

Jimmy Carter was cruising to a landslide re-election this time 36 years ago.  Nixon and Ford had driven the GOP brand into the ground with a massive political scandal and a failed war, and the Republicans were on their way to nominate the star of "Bedtime for Bonzo" as their champion.

Then Carter's failed attempt to rescue the Iran hostages happened in April and things went to hell pretty quickly from there, with John Anderson finishing off the deal with his third party run that gave Reagan 44 states.

So much could happen between now and Election Day that puts Trump in the Oval Office with a GOP Congress and puts America straight into a flaming toilet for decades.

Take nothing for granted.

A Load Of Crap In The NC Bathroom Bill

So North Carolina state Republican lawmakers called a special session of the General Assembly to stop Charlotte's LGBTQ anti-discrimination law from going into effect on April 1, and it turns out it's not just Charlotte's ordinance they want to outlaw, but any real progressive change sought by cities and counties in the Tarheel State.

WBTV obtained a copy of the proposed bill, entitled “An Act to Provide for Single Sex Multiple Occupancy Bathroom and Changing Facilities in Schools and Public Agencies and to Create Statewide Consistency in Regulation of Employment and Public Accommodations,” Tuesday night. 

The legislation requires that multi-occupancy bathrooms be limited to just one gender, using anatomy and birth certificates as a guide and applies to executive branch agencies controlled by the Governor as well as Council of State members and the UNC System. 

A provision in the five-page bill allows school districts to use single occupancy bathrooms to make accommodations for students in special circumstances. 

DOCUMENT: Click here to read the full bill 

In addition to the provisions of the bill seeking to repeal the bathroom-related portions of Charlotte’s non discrimination ordinance, the bill also addresses several workplace issues. 

The second part of the bill is referred to as the Wage and Hour Act. Under the act, local governments would be prohibited from setting their own local minimum wage. 

The next section of the bill seeks to declare that the regulation of discriminatory practices in employment is an issue of statewide concern and, as such, must be left to the General Assembly. 

Finally, the last section of the bill is referred to as the Equal Access to Public Accommodations Act, which places issues of public accommodation in the jurisdiction of the General Assembly.

So in addition to killing Charlotte's anti-discrimination law, with this stupid bigoted bathroom bill, the NC GOP is looking to undo all local anti-discrimination, minimum wage, and equal physical access laws. because smaller, more responsive government, right?

Which just proves again that Republicans don't care about government that works, they care about government that punishes those people whenever possible so that they become somebody else's problem.

The best part?  It's a combination of "bathroom bill", home rule elimination, and "religious freedom" bill all rolled into one steaming pile of toxic GOP diarrhea.

By the way, the bill passed the NC General Assembly overwhelmingly, 83-24.  And my home state is well on its way to being the most bigoted state in the nation.

Cruz's Brussels Hustle

oday in the "general reminder that Ted Cruz is actually more dangerous than Donald Trump" category, we have the Texas senator's official response to Tuesday's Islamic State-claimed attacks in Brussels, via MoJo's Pena Levy:

"Today radical Islamic terrorists targeted the men and women of Brussels as they went to work on a spring morning. In a series of coordinated attacks they murdered and maimed dozens of innocent commuters at subway stations and travelers at the airport. For the terrorists, the identities of the victims were irrelevant. They –we—are all part of an intolerable culture that they have vowed to destroy. 

"For years, the west has tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear. We can no longer afford either. Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods. 

"We will do what we can to help them fight this scourge, and redouble our efforts to make sure it does not happen here. We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. 

"We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS. The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we are are at an end. Our country is at stake."

The part about turning Muslim neighborhoods into de facto internment camps is the new, scary part of Cruz's rhetoric, but it remains that the rest of this awful little polyp's policies will have us in a ground war in Syria by Valentine's Day if he's elected president.

Of course, the part where Cruz assumes all Muslims here are potential criminals who need to be "secured" by "empowered law enforcement" rather than, you know, Americans, is also something of an issue.  That's a dark road we've been down before on more than one occasion.

So yeah, might want to consider voting against these guys in November if you're darker than a paper bag.  Just sayin'.

StupidiNews!

• Police have arrested a third suspect in Tuesday's Brussels airport bombing, Belgian officials believe two brothers killed in the attack were the primary suicide bombers.
• California labor activists have gathered enough signatures to get a voter proposition on November's ballot that will raise the state's minimum wage to $15 an hour.
• Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton won their respective Arizona primaries, but challengers Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders won Utah's caucuses with Sanders taking Idaho.
• Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's first budget restores cuts made by his predecessor and spends billions on infrastructure and services to foster growth.
• Chevy is on track to roll out the first Bolt electric cars this year as the race with Tesla to get an affordable mass-market electric vehicle to market picks up steam.

Last Call For Return Of The Granny Starver

Chuck Pierce believes House Speaker Paul Ryan's AIPAC speech is a definite indicator that he's running...for...something.

All three of the remaining presidential candidates got the prime speaking slots Monday night at the annual AIPAC policy conference, to which we were not invited, alas, although that seems to have been somewhat epidemic. But any chance we get to hear Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, talk about foreign policy, the area in which Joe Biden literally laughed him out of the campaign in 2012, is one that we never should pass up. (Remember when Ryan explained to us that, in Afghanistan, it snows during the winter? Gravitas!) Of all the barefaced pandering that went on yesterday, and Hillary Rodham Clinton was singing in tuneMonday afternoon, the face of Ryan's pandering was the barest of all, and not just because he's lost the scruff he was cultivating a few months back. This was a guy doing more than rattling the saber. He was swinging it around his head until the air whistled. And, yes, this was a guy who's still thinking about being president, no matter how many non-facts he burbles out on the topic to various interviewers.

There are two outcomes from the GOP Convention in Cleveland: the party knuckles under for Trump and goes on to get crushed in November, or the party tries to steal it from Trump and gets crushed in November.  The latter requires somebody young, telegenic, utterly under the control of Republican orthodoxy, ideally already in the GOP leadership and from a swing state and ambitious to the point of near psychopathy.

Paul Ryan, in other words.  In his words, actually:

"The threats are very different now. North Korea thumbs its nose at the world as it plays with its nuclear weapons. Iran openly backs tyrants and funds terrorist groups as it jockeys for dominance in the Middle East. An emboldened Russia is only too happy to try to reclaim its neighbors as client states. And with the rise of ISIS, an even deadlier strain of Islamist extremism has taken hold. Once again we face an aggressive militant ideology—with an assist from a gang of rogue states. And why is our relationship with Israel so important? Because in the fight against terrorism and proliferation, our interests are one and the same. For the terrorists, Israel is the first target, and we are the ultimate one. That's because we share the same values." 

Yeah, he's running.

I'd say so, yes.  He's so eager to shiv Trump right now he's practically vibrating.

The Don's Capo, After Hours

Ever since Donald Trump started making things pretty awful for our friends in the media, it turns out that they're no longer content to sit on the stories of abuse that they're taking on the campaign trail anymore, especially since Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is a scary, awful pile of talking garbage, it seems.

To a degree that is virtually unprecedented for a political operative in his position, Lewandowski frequently places himself in the middle of chaotic press scrums and volatile campaign crowds, and has reacted with physical aggression at times. 

At a press conference earlier this month in West Palm Beach, Florida, Lewandowski physically pushed CNN reporter Noah Gray away from Trump as he tried to ask the candidate a question, according to a source with close knowledge of the incident. 

It was not the first time the campaign manager had gotten in Gray’s face to prevent him from reporting. In November, when the reporter attempted to film protesters who were disrupting a Trump rally, Lewandowski threatened to pull his credentials unless he went back inside the pen the campaign uses to corral journalists. He was also heard instructing the press secretary that if Gray didn’t obey him he would be “fucking blacklisted.” The CNN reporter’s tweets about the incident riled Lewandowski and briefly inflamed tensions between the campaign and the traveling press corps, reporters told BuzzFeed News. 

A spokesperson for CNN did not respond to a request for comment. 

The campaign manager’s aggression is not necessarily physical: In one instance, at a restaurant in New York last year, Lewandowski was seen throwing back multiple drinks and loudly threatening someone on the phone. 

There is also talk among Trump’s traveling press corps for his behavior toward women. Politico first reported that Lewandowski has made “sexually suggestive” comments to female journalists that one recipient described as “completely inappropriate in a professional setting.” 

In conversations with reporters, he has expressed frustration with female journalists covering the campaign while also voicing a wish to have sex with them. And sources told BuzzFeed News that more than once, he has called female reporters late at night to come on to them, often not sounding entirely sober. Some in the press corps joke that if Lewandowski is calling after a certain hour, women are better off not answering.

It's about time that the Village started to turn on Trump.  Only fitting, as they helped create his rise in the first place nine months ago.  Now they are learning pretty quickly what the cost of covering Trump for ratings truly entails.  I'm only surprised that it took this long.

AIPAC Them In

If there's one thing Bernie Sanders has done during this primary season that I agree with, it's skipping AIPAC's annual meeting in DC on Monday, something he has been able to do being a major-party Jewish candidate.  Hillary Clinton did show up at the conference yesterday, and her speech was frankly the best reason yet why I still have major reservations about her.

WaPo's Paul Waldman:

In any case, every politician knows what they have to do when it comes to AIPAC: go to the conference, talk about the times you’ve visited the Holy Land, wax rhapsodic about the deep connection between our two countries, say that when you’re elected the bond between us will be stronger than ever, and make sure everyone knows that you’re as “pro-Israel” as you could possibly be. 

There has been a shift recently, however. For many years, everyone paid lip service to the idea that a two-state solution, with Palestinians eventually freed from Israeli occupation and left to govern themselves, was what we all wanted. The difference was that Democrats usually meant it, and many Republicans didn’t. These days, many Republicans no longer pretend that the Palestinians deserve self-government, or any rights at all. Ask them about a two-state solution, and they’ll just talk about how Palestinians are terrorists. 

Clinton’s brief discussion of this issue in her speech can only be described as half-hearted:

“It may be difficult to imagine progress in this current climate when many Israelis doubt that a willing and capable partner for peace even exists. But inaction cannot be an option. Israelis deserve a secure homeland for the Jewish people. Palestinians should be able to govern themselves in their own state, in peace and dignity. And only a negotiated two-state agreement can survive those outcomes.” 

What she failed to mention is that the current government of Israel isn’t a “willing partner” to negotiations either. Just before he got reelected last March, Prime Minister Netanyahu made explicit what everyone already knew, that there will never be a Palestinian state on his watch. And in her entire speech, the closest Clinton got to a criticism of the Israeli government was this line: “Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements.” If you were her speechwriter, that’s about what you’d come up with if she told you, “Put the word ‘settlements’ in there somewhere just so I can say I mentioned it, but make it so vague that it doesn’t actually sound like I’m taking any position at all.”

If there's serious differences between Clinton and Obama on foreign policy, it's on the subject of Israel and Palestine.   And it got worse:

Clinton also came out forcefully against the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), which seeks to exert pressure on Israel to change its policies toward the Palestinians. I’m not going to wade into the debate over BDS, but it was striking that Clinton took what is essentially the position of maximal opposition to BDS: not that it has legitimate arguments to make even if it often takes them too far, or that the movement tolerates anti-Semites within its ranks, or that people within it are starting from liberal values and thus might be persuaded to agree with someone like her, but that the entire thing is anti-Semitic and therefore must simply be fought:

“Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. 

“Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. 

“I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now. As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS.” 

Now, it's one thing to believe Israel is committing collective punishment against the Palestinian people and using your pocketbook as something to try to convince Israel's government to be more lenient.

It is another thing entirely to treat those efforts as purely anti-Semitic and without any merit, value, or even saying they do not have the right to exist.  That is the kind of ridiculous rhetoric I expect to hear from Ted Cruz or Rick Santorum, that disagreement with Israel is in and of itself anti-Semitic. But from Hillary Clinton?

I have a tremendous problem with that train of thought.  I understand that Sanders has issues on foreign policy fitness, but Clinton's Israel policy as stated Monday is abysmal.

Granted, I know in a general election Clinton's total policy package would be far and above any of the GOP contenders, but on this issue there's no difference, and that's something that's going to hurt us down the road.  It's just a matter and how soon and how badly.

StupidiNews!

• At least 23 people are dead after a wave of bombings in Brussels, Belgium this morning, with blasts at the city's airport and at least one metro station.
• President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro gave a joint press conference in Havana hailing a "new day" in US-Cuba relations, despite major differences on human rights issues.
• Voters head to the polls in Arizona and Utah today, and Democrats in Idaho will caucus as front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump look to expand their delegate leads.
• Atlantic City, NJ Mayor Don Guardian says that city workers won't be paid and non-essential services will be shut down for most of April as the casino city struggles with bankruptcy.
• A partnership between Toyota and academic researchers may have yielded a new solid-state battery technology that could revolutionize the industry.

Last Call For The Collectively Named Love Boat

Democracy in action is sometimes...awesome.

When the UK's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) spent millions of dollars outfitting a boat for latest in polar research technology, someone got the bright idea: What if we let the Internet vote on the name of the ship? 

"Ton-for-ton, the ship—together with NERC's existing two blue water research ships—will provide the UK with the most advanced floating research fleet in the world and will help put the UK at the forefront of ocean research for years to come," said the NERC in a statement. "We're looking for an inspirational name that exemplifies the work it will do. The ship could be named after a local historical figure, movement, or landmark—or a famous polar explorer or scientist."

The Internet being The Internet, you can imagine what happened next.

The internet was glad to help, offering up names like "Usain Bolt," "Ice Ice Baby," and "Notthetitanic." The ultimate winner? The RMS Boaty McBoatface.

Of course, there's no guarantee the ship will actually set sail under that moniker. The NERC gets ultimate say about what the ship is named. But the orgnization don't go with RMS Boaty McBoatface, it's missing the chance to make the future of naval exploration much, much funnier.

I for one think the RMS Boaty McBoatface needs to happen simply as a warning to other people not to let The Internet be allowed to name things.

Ever.

(It's still funny though.)

Big, Funny-Shaped, Unstable Tent Politics

With the GOP in the middle of a nuclear meltdown, it's up to our Village Betters to make sure that Democrats don't get cocky or think that they matter, because there's always hippie-punching to be done.  Today's example, Charlie Camosy, who has been telling Dems for years now to embrace the "pro-life liberal".

Democrats can make a home for these stranded voters. Opening a big tent to pro-lifers would not only offer a hospitable climate for Democrats who value a “whole life” ethic, which weaves together common Democratic concerns like care for the impoverished and elderly with an equal interest in the unborn; it would also put them in a good position to win the next generation. Millennials and Latinos, after all, are trending more antiabortion than any other young generation in recent U.S. history. Only 37 percent of young people think that abortion is morally acceptable — while 54 percent of Latinos think abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. 

Recent historical research on the progressive roots of the pro-life movement in the United States suggests a Democratic coalition with space for pro-lifers wouldn’t be a novel phenomenon. As Kristen Day, president of Democrats for Life, reminds us: In 1976 there were an astonishing 125 antiabortion Democrats in Congress. Today there are three. Jim Oberstar, who was a Minnesota congressman, used to say that pro-lifers didn’t stop sending people to Congress, but rather “they just stopped sending Democrats.” 

And, because roughly 20 million Democrats identify as antiabortion, it’s possible that inviting antiabortion Dems back into the fold could also reinforce the party’s numbers by heralding the return of the so-called missing pro-life Democrats, along with current Republican voters who might cross party lines.

It’s difficult to predict just how many disaffected pro-lifers currently attached to the Republican party might cast their votes for Democrats given the opportunity. But there is good reason to believe that, especially among Millennial voters, such a strategy could have meaningful returns for Democrats. In 2010, research conducted by NARAL found that there is a significant “intensity gap” between pro-life and pro-choice Millennial voters: While 51 percent of pro-lifers under 30 considered abortion a “very important” voting issue, only 26 percent of pro-choice Millennials said the same. The fact that such a high percentage of young pro-lifers consider abortion a top priority suggests that, should Democrats shift their stalwart pro-choice stance, the next generation of antiabortion voters may well lend them much-needed support. Judging by the example of 2006, such a groundswell could bring about a real, lasting boost for local and congressional Democrats.

In other words, if Democrats abandon all this nonsense about women actually being able to get accessible reproductive healthcare, white Millennial dudebros will come back to the Dems, and they're the only voters that actually matter.  If that sounds like a gigantic pile of crap, it's because it is, and Camosy contributes to the Glibertarian Nonsense machine that is The Federalist.

What Camosy really wants is both parties to get rid of abortion completely, because the Bitches Need To Know Their Place.  If you think Camosy and his 30-something cadre of kinder, gentler MRA slut-shaming misogynists would ever start voting for the Democrats, you're out of your mind.

But that's exactly what Camosy wants stupid people to think.

House Of Cards

Democrats would need to win 30 seats to take the House back.  In January, that was considered impossible, that there simply weren't enough competitive House Republican seats to try to pick up. You can thank Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for fixing that problem.  The latest Cook Political Report on the House now puts 31 GOP seats in striking distance and 42 in possible play in total.



So yes, considering things are bad enough for the GOP with Trump as the frontrunner that Utah could be a competitive swing state come November, the wipeout of Republicans downticket could become a reality.

Now it's March and there's a long, grueling, ugly campaign ahead for 33 Senate seats and 435 House seats in addition to the White House, so who knows how many Republicans will be able to decouple themselves from Trump and survive.  Or not.  But at this point a Goldwater-style realignment isn't out of the question anymore like it was just eight weeks ago.

And this analysis too will change as we get closer to November.