All Eyes and Ears On SCOTUS This Week

Blockbuster cases to be heard on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week:

California's Proposition 8:

"The Supreme Court will take up a challenge...to California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure which amends the state’s constitution to hold that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” 

 The outcome could range from requiring all states to accept gay marriage or decreeing such bans constitutional. The justices could also dodge the issue." 

And DOMA:

"The Court could determine that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection for all under the law. In that scenario, gay couples in states like Massachusetts and Maine would begin to receive federal perks for married couples such as retirement and tax benefits. 

 The reach of such a decision would be important for future gay marriage battles. “Of course, if they strike it down they could write the opinion narrowly, just about Section 3 of DOMA, or broadly in a way that recognizes a constitutional right to marriage equality,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at UC-Irvine."

Polls in 2013

A March Washington Post poll shows that 58% of Americans support same-sex marriage while 36% oppose. The poll indicates that 52% of GOP-leaning independents under 50 years old now support gay marriage.

A March Quinnipiac University poll found 47% support and 43% opposed among all voters.

A March Fox News poll indicated that 46% of Americans both support and oppose same-sex marriage.

A February 6-10 CBS News Poll shows that 54% of Americans support same-sex marriage while 46% oppose.



As the above polls indicate, a majority of Americas have come to understand that marriage equality is a civil right, not a privilege, and marriage equality certainly should not be denied through religious prohibitions that would be imposed on a secular society such as ours.  No religious organization will be forced to perform marriages it is opposed to. So those who object to marriage equality can rest assured that if his or her religion forbids such unions, his or her place of worship is in no danger.  Happily there are religions that have embraced marriage equality and welcome couples who wish to marry into their community.


Unfortunately many Americans still do not support this basic civil right:   Marriage equality:


"Among G.O.P. Voters, Little Support for Same-Sex Marriage 
By NATE SILVER 

The decision by the Senator Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, to announce his support for same-sex marriage may come to be seen as a watershed moment for gay rights advocates. 

Mr. Portman’s announcement, which he said he made in part because his son is gay, has so far yielded relatively little pushback from Republicans on blogs and social media, or from other Republican office-holders. Instead, gay rights advocates are increasingly finding support from influential Republicans.

But the rank and file of the Republican Party may be different, and the polling suggests that they have largely not changed their views on same-sex marriage." 




I remain very hopeful that the SCOTUS will rule favorably later this year on these two issues, since I cannot find any legal or moral reason that it should not.  I'm pretty certain all of us know gays and lesbians either through our circle of friends or through family members; and any arguments against extending equal rights to our LGBT family and friends would be a step backward and a betrayal of the fundamental guarantees America was founded on.


Let's hope America does the moral and just thing in this case.

Sunday Poetry

I wrote this poem a while back in free verse form and had it workshopped.  The participants in the poetry workshop liked it well enough, but Lucie Brock-Broido, who ran the workshop, suggested I put it in sonnet form.  


C(LOVE)

The evening’s air is sweet with new mown grass,
I know what lies ahead.  The candle’s lit,
we are alone. I touch with tenderness
your bulbous form, peel back your papery skin,

reveal your glossy flesh, as sleek as pearl.
I gently pull apart each clove, I press
you to my lips and am enflamed--your oil,
your pungent scent, your promise of a sauce,

a broth, or piquant aglio olio dip.
I chop and crush, you satisfy my need,
surrender all your fire, your creamy pulp,
your lusciousness.  O little passion bead,

I’ll always keep you near to me, that we
may ever share this allium ecstasy.

                                          --S.K.

HEAD EXPLOSION ALERT!

UPDATE BELOW


Wait until the frightwingers hear about this!


Brits name Michelle Obama as their fashion queen : 

All hail the foremost representative of fashion royalty! A British magazine created this image of Michelle Obama as a queen to promote its best-dressed list.

"Michelle Obama might still be regarded as a polarizing figure in America, but the Brits are less divided in their feelings about her — especially in their appreciation of her fashion sense. 

The famously choosy Sunday Times Style Magazine named the first lady to the top of its best-dressed list and put a tiara-bedecked Obama in profile in the queen's spot on a first-class stamp. 

This has been a high-water mark for the first lady and her sartorial influence. 

The fashion-savvy Obama, who has championed American designers such as Jason Wu and Tracey Reese, is also on the cover of Vogue's influential March issue."

Michelle Obama might be regarded as a polarizing figure only because those on the extreme right make her so.  

She is an intelligent, caring, dignified, and lovely First Lady who is admired around the world and here in her own country.  

There will always be malcontents who envy or hate her and wish to bring her down.  I've been to conservative blogs where they post racist links to try to diminish her.  That sort of creepy hatred doesn't affect her one jot.

Those unhappy creatures who continue to disrespect Mrs. Obama will themselves be eaten up by their own nastiness.

"Hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die." 



HEAD EXPLOSION ALERT!!!

What did I tell ya?  Here's the first comment on this post about the FLOTUS, and just after the "Texas conservative" took the time to come here, write it, and hit "publish", I heard a terrible EXPLOSION!  And bits of crania fell on my roof!  Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.  

Poor commenter haz a sad!  Because Michelle Obama!  

From Texas conservative @1:23 PM 

"Did you ever read such crap before in your life as this CRAP about MOOCHELLE Obama the Wicked Witch of the West Wing? And why is this Nazis FORCING my kids to eat the food that she wants them to eat? If the libtards are nuts over her then let them, and tell her to STFU."

Normally I delete trolls, but this comment so perfectly illustrates the bile (and illiteracy) that churns in the minds of these sorts of malcontents. Whomever "Texas conservative" is, I thank him or her for his or her cooperation in proving my point.

OMG!  There's this, too?!   Both Obamas in one week!

What will we tell the children?

UPDATE:

Miss Israel: Obama ‘world-class hunk’

President Obama Receives Highest Civilian Honor from Israel

Obama first sitting president to receive Medal of Distinction in Israel


"President Obama received Israel’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Distinction presented by President Shimon Peres at a state dinner."




Barack Obama visited Israel in the third month of his second term in office.

George W. Bush went during the last year of his presidency and his father, George H. W. Bush never went.

You know who else never went to Israel during his 8 years in office?

If you said Ronald Reagan, you'd be correct.

So, to review, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, all went to Israel during their presidencies, while Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush never went, and George W. Bush went in the LAST year of his presidency.

And how many times have I read on rightwing blogs that President Obama disrespects Israel?  Is no friend of Israel?  

A lot.

And those bloggers obviously don't know what they're talking about.


By MARY BRUCE (@marykbruce) and JONATHAN KARL (@jonkarl) 
JERUSALEM, March 20, 2013 

"Seeking to reassure the United States's primary ally in the Middle East, President Obama today told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his administration remains committed to doing "what is necessary" to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. "We do not have a policy of containment when it comes to a nuclear Iran. Our policy is to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon," 

Obama told reporters at a joint press conference after a series of closed-door meetings with Israeli leaders. "The United States will continue to consult closely with Israel on next steps. And I will repeat, all options are on the table," he said. It's no secret that Obama and Netanyahu have had a rocky relationship, although it was hard to tell by the way the two leaders publicly lauded each other and joked around. 

 During the American presidential campaign, Republicans alleged that President Obama was not committed to protecting Israel, but today Obama and "Bibi," as he called him, appeared at ease in front of the press. 

 Netanyahu even placed Obama's commitment to Israel's right of self-defense above that of any other U.S. president."



To the misinformed wingers who disparage this president and his relations with Israel?  

Do your homework.

Haaretz:

When love was here for a royal visit 

The whole point of Obama's trip to Israel is the pep talk for peace that he delivered in Jerusalem. Peace, the president said, is necessary, just and possible.


David Horovitz in the Times of  Israel

 "It was a deft, brilliantly conceived speech. He told Israelis how moral they are, how admirably creative they are, how smart with those 10 Nobel prizes, how democratic, how prosperous, and how mighty — the most powerful country in the region. He told them that the world’s strongest nation stood unshakably with them. “So long as there is a United States of America, Atem Lo Levad” — you are not alone. 

 And having built them up, convinced them of their near-invincibility, he showed them a theoretical future that he insisted could be realized if they would only trust in their strength sufficiently to take risks for peace. A future in which the security threats will recede. The prosperity will increase. The moral stain of occupation will disappear. All it takes is that determined, constant push for peace. How could they refuse him?"


Yossi Klein Halevi calls it perhaps ” the most passionate Zionist speech ever given by an American president”: 

 "Of course, his embrace had an explicit message for Israelis: Don’t give up on the dream of peace and don’t forget that the Palestinians deserve a state just as you do. But as the repeated ovations from the politically and culturally diverse audience revealed, these are messages that Israelis can hear when couched in affection and solidarity. After four years of missed signals, Obama finally realized that Israelis respond far more to love than to pressure."

What The Gobshites* Are Saying on the Intertoobz

I went blog-hopping this morning to see what our conservative/libertarian friends were writing about and came across a couple of posts purporting to be about race, racialists, and racism.  The first one I read begins with definitions on what racism and the term "racist" is, then it devolved into the same old biased, ignorant rant against the president, thereby proving, to me at least, that people of a certain political persuasion haven't the ability to discuss these issues with any sense of their own deep-seated bigotry and biases.  This particular screed continued with a grossly insulting reference to liberals/progressives and the entire African-American community:


"There is simply no other way to explain the concerted effort among progressive communists to keep American blacks poor, ignorant, and dependent upon government for their sense of self-worth."

First off, who are these "progressive communists" who have the legislative power in Washington or in local governments to "...keep American blacks poor, ignorant, and dependent upon government...?"  

The writer shows his crass bigotry toward African-Americans by his gross generalization of an entire group of people.  His lazy statement contains the idea that all American blacks are so poor, so stupid, and so helpless that they haven't the ability to see that progressives/liberals are keeping them that way?  This demeaning premise is probably one of the most racially loaded statements to be read anywhere by anyone, and it is a great insight into exactly why 98% of our African-American citizens reject the Republican Party.  

Hint to GOP:  When you keep telling a huge percentage of our population that they're too stupid to know what's good for them, those same people are not likely to want to join your club.

The GOP believes African-Americans are all helpless moochers who haven't the ability to think for themselves, and that African-Americans stay within the Democratic Party because the Democrats give them "stuff."  The blogger who posted this piece of gobshite, and others who nod their head in smug agreement, can't accept that almost a majority of our African-American brothers and sisters belong to the Democratic Party through their own free will and choosing and that they make that choice with intelligence and by understanding what a good many GOPers secretly believe of them.   

Go read that blogger's statement again and understand how biased and bigoted it is.


The blogger continues this phony examination of racism and racists by launching into the usual Teapublican attack on President Obama, after telling us that African-Americans are too stupid to think for themselves and by quoting some right-wing writer's 2008 biased and inaccurate description of President Obama:


"Dr. Jack Wheeler, who in 2008 wrote: 'Barack Hussein Obama is an eloquently tailored empty suit. He has no resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how our economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls … nothing, in fact, but abstract, empty rhetoric devoid of substance. 

 'The man has no identity; he is half white, which he rejects. 

The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African surname and his Arabic first and middle names, proclaiming his Arab parentage to people in Kenya. Only a small part of him is black African from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively. 

 “What he is not, what he is not even a genetic drop of, is ‘African American.’ He is not the descendent of enslaved Africans brought to the Americas chained in slave ships. He hasn’t a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. They were profitable slave-trading Muslims —until the British ended it.” This is the real Barack Obama, who in their infinite wisdom the American people elected —twice." 


 "Was Jack Wheeler a racist, or was he simply making an astute observation? 

Yes. I call this Wheeler person a racist AND excruciatingly stupid.

But wait, because this Wheeler character's body was found somewhere on a trash heap, the writer connects it immediately, with no evidence whatsoever except his galloping biases, to "Chicago politics," code words for Barack Obama, since that's where he and most of his political allies came from:

 "Among a few, then, it was no surprise that Jack Wheeler’s body turned up on a trash heap. Some would describe his murder as his likely comeuppance. Others might call it Chicago politics ... the kind of gangsterism we've come to expect from Eric Holder, who sold guns to Mexican drug gangs in order to make a case against our Second Amendment rights..."


It's impossible to have a discussion with people like the person who quoted this mish-mash of bigotry, innuendo, and lies. They see Mr. Obama as an interloper who has no right to be in the White House.   

No other president has ever been subjected to a continuous assault on his birth, his  heritage, his relatives, and his ancestors.  

There is a reason for this, my friends.  

You figure it out.  

The person who wrote and quoted that pile of feculence certainly can't.



*Gobshites: h/t Charles Pierce

George and Tony's Excellent Adventure in Iraq.

Coming up to the ten-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, more information on the false premise for going to war--Saddam Hussein's WMDs, has become public.  And it confirms what many of us have been saying for the past ten years:   There were no WMDs.  

The fake-threat of WMDs was sexed up by Bush and Blair to get the USA and the United Kingdom frightened enough to send their blood and treasure to fight their war.  Ten years later and hundreds of thousands of dead Americans, Iraqis, and other nationals, and trillions of dollars that plunged us into debt, what have we to show for it?




"Prior to the war, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom claimed that Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed a threat to their security and that of their coalition/regional allies. In 2002, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1441 which called for Iraq to completely cooperate with UN weapon inspectors to verify that Iraq was not in possession of WMD and cruise missiles. 

Prior to the attack, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) found no evidence of WMD, but could not yet verify the accuracy of Iraq's declarations regarding what weapons it possessed.  After investigation following the invasion, the U.S.‑led Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had ended its nuclear, chemical and biological programs in 1991 and had no active programs at the time of the invasion, but that they intended to resume production if the Iraq sanctions were lifted. 

Although some degraded remnants of misplaced or abandoned chemical weapons from before 1991 were found, they were not the weapons which had been one of the main arguments for the invasion. Some U.S. officials also accused Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of harboring and supporting al-Qaeda, but no evidence of a meaningful connection was ever found."  --Wikipedia



By Tom Whitehead, and Duncan Gardham
11:42PM GMT 
17 Mar 2013 

"The US and UK are accused of relying on questionable information that suggested Saddam Hussein was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction (WMD), despite warnings over its authenticity. At the same time, other foreign intelligence that suggested no such programme existed was dismissed, according to a BBC Panorama investigation. One Iraqi spy – codenamed "Curveball" – whose claims to have witnessed the manufacture of WMD were seized upon by the Americans told the programme the invasion had been based on his 'lie'.

 Lord Butler, who, a year after the invasion, carried out a British review of the intelligence used, admitted that he was unaware that two senior members of Saddam's regime had secretly told the CIA and MI6 that WMD did not exist. The documentary will reignite questions over the legality and justification of the Iraq war. One source told the programme the conflict was borne out of "choice" rather than 'necessity'."

New evidence: CIA and MI6 were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD

"BBC’s Panorama reveals fresh evidence that agencies dismissed intelligence from Iraq foreign minister and spy chief Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was 'active', 'growing' and 'up and running'." 


More here:


CIA and MI6 knew Iraq had no WMDs BBC Panorama to claim

All lies; all hubris  

The Bush Administration dragged the US and other countries into an illegal war based on lies.  

Here are the costs in human life and debt we must live with for years and years to come:

190,000 lives lost, $2.2 trillion cost - Looking back at decade since start of Iraq War

"In the decade since its beginning, the Iraq War has claimed more than 190,000 lives, including 7,888 American military personnel and contractors, according to a new comprehensive study of the war. In recognition of the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on March 19, Brown University has released The Cost of War project, an analysis of the direct and indirect human, economic and social cost of the war. Here's a by-the-numbers look at some of the major findings: 

 $2.2 trillion – The cost of the Iraq War, including cost related to caring for veterans. 
Initial estimates were $50-60 billion. $500 billion – 
The cost of caring for Iraq War veterans through 2053. 134,000 – 
The number of Iraqi civilians who died of direct war violence. 
That number is about 70 percent of total war deaths. 
 4,488 – The number of U.S. service members killed in Iraq."

With the tax dollars the US spent for a failed state and the terrible consequences of war, it could have brought health care to every man, woman, and child in the US.  Our priorities appear to be those of an empire in decline.

And last but not at all the least, the spittle-combed neocon who helped deceive Americans into supporting his war of choice, Paul Wolfowitz:

10 Years On, Paul Wolfowitz Admits U.S. Bungled in Iraq


"In an interview with The Sunday Times to mark the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, he said there 'should have been Iraqi leadership from the beginning', rather than a 14-month occupation led by an American viceroy and based on 'this idea that we’re going to come in like [General Douglas] MacArthur in Japan and write the constitution for them'. 

 He accepted that too many Iraqis were excluded by a programme to purge members of the ruling Ba’ath party, that the dissolution of the Iraqi army was botched and that the 'biggest hole' in post-war planning was not to anticipate the possibility of an insurgency. 'The most consequential failure was to understand the tenacity of Saddam’s regime,' he said."

Hubris.

We can thank President George W. Bush for the horror that was, and still is, Iraq, the thousands of lives lost, and the pillaging of the US treasury to pay for his Miserable Failure.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to All My Irish Family and Friends!

And from the incomparable Flann O'Brien/Brian O'Nolan, one of my favorite Irish writers:

 

 Brian O'Nolan/Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen


 

Wealth Inequality in America

It's not what you think it is:










The Dystopian Dream for America, brought to us by conservative and libertarian ideology.

 The conservative/libertarian ideal is to shrink government so that it will drown in a bathtub. 

No Medicare, no Medicaid, kill Obamacare, and other safety nets for the poorest of the poor.  Only charities and vouchers for a country of 311 million people. 

Oh, and a bazooka and AK-47 in every pot.  

BTW,  no birth control for you, lady, it's immoral!    

Is this their "vision" for America?

Donald Trump Speaks to CPAC's Empty Chairs!

Donald Trump:   "Birth certificate...blah, blah, blah...college transcripts...blah, blah, blah...my people are finding amazing things about...blah, blah, blah...Obama...blah, blah, blah.

His own people didn't show up to listen to the braying jackass.

And remember:  This clown was invited to CPAC, and Chris Christie, a very popular conservative governor of a very liberal state, wasn't.

Can the GOP be any more self-destructive than that?

PAUL RYAN STILL DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT HE AND MITT LOST THE ELECTION

During the campaign, Ryan claimed that the election would be a choice between two fundamentally different visions for America, and the American people fundamentally REJECTED Ryan's and Romney's visions.  In fact, Ryan's own home town and home state rejected him, and every one of Romney's home states, Michigan, Massachusetts, and California, REJECTED him.  What don't they understand about this total rejection by the American people?

During the campaign, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the Ryan budget "immoral."  Ryan loves to talk about his devotion to his religion, and yet he appears not to know the fundamentals of his savior, Jesus's, message.  The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called him out on his merciless budget plan that would comfort the already comfortable and afflict the already afflicted.

From Andrew Sullivan's blog "The Daily Dish:"

"...Ryan's budget is as notable for what it cuts as for what it doesn’t cut. Social Security, defense, and Medicare — together making up about half of the federal budget — would scarcely be cut at all. After all, it’s hard to win a Republican election if you abandon old voters and the defense industry. 

As for health care and cash support for the poor? That’s where the hammer hits. Jon Cohn adds: The report’s distinct treatment of defense and non-defense spending is actually a great window into Ryan’s fundamental philosophy. The section on defense spending has long passages about the importance of national security and the dangers of intemperate cuts. Rooting out waste is important, the document says, but it must be done carefully. 

The section on the social safety net has virtually no similar language. A reader unfamiliar with the reality of American life would have no idea that millions of Americans live in poverty—that they struggle, every day, to pay for bare necessities like gas, rent, and food. Of course, if “The Path to Prosperity” mentioned those things, readers might want to know what Ryan proposed to do about them. But Ryan doesn’t propose meaningful substitutes for the support he’d take away. Instead, he puts his faith in the strength of individuals and communities to help those who struggle. 

The absence of defense cuts reveals that this is not about fiscal conservatism; it’s about a society that celebrates soaring inequality while attempting to remain the sole global hegemon. It’s almost a parody of a document of how a democracy perishes – because its social contract ends with two utterly separate nations of “hyper-rich” and “always-struggling”, it delegitimizes capitalism by rewarding and even celebrating its abusers, and because its premature austerity could well increase the long-term debt, rather than lower it. It’s a high school term paper of utopianism. 

And it’s all Paul Ryan knows." 

Here's Ryan in his own words:

"This to us is something that we're not going to give up on, because we're not going to give up on destroying the health care system for the American people."

There it is people.  What could be plainer than that?

America's very own zombie-eyed granny starver, but he loves Jesus!

Ayn Rand would be so proud. Not to mention that she died while living off public assistance and receiving Medicare because she smoked herself to death. And Ryan himself used publicly financed student loans to get through school just in time to cut the same programs for everyone else. 

Paul Ryan has not worked a single day in his adult life outside of government.  He IS government.  The kind that likes to tell people how EEEEvul and liberty-killing it is while taking all of its benefits and working to keep them away from everyone else.   

"...Paul Ryan is a charlatan, and not a very subtle one." 

New Rules

Bill Maher points out how everything's become political, even our beer!

(I'm out of town for a few days.  No intertoobz while away.  See you on Wednesday.)

Massachusetts Sculptor and Musician, Jack Vasapoli

My cousin, Jack Vasapoli, is a sculptor and musician [he plays the alto sax with a local band, The Swamptones].  

Over the last 30 years he has carved in wood images of some of our greatest jazz musicians.   In the spring of 2012, he had a one-man show at The Brooks School in Andover, Mass.  

This February and March, Buckingham, Browne and Nichols is featuring a one-man show of Jack's remarkable sculptures of America's legends of music.

More images of Jack's work HERE.

Bravo, Jack!

Powerful, Rich White Guy, Roger Ailes, Calls POTUS "Lazy." Antonin Scalia Sticks Fingers in Ears, Yells La-La-La, I Can't HEAR You!.

Let's see.  

The less than august Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, makes a statement claiming we're no longer a racist nation, we're all over that; therefore, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is not needed in our racially sensitive and racially healthy, non-bigoted country. 

Then we read this from Roger Ailes of the MOST WATCHED cable news station in this country:

 “Obama’s the one who never worked a day in his life. He never earned a penny that wasn’t public money. 

How many fund-raisers does he attend every week? 

How often does he play basketball and golf? 

I wish I had that kind of time. 

He’s lazy, but the media won’t report that.


So Fox News' chief said the President is a lazy black man who lives off public money and loves to play basketball." 



For the record, Obama taught law at a private university and worked at a law firm, so Ailes is not only peddling racist garbage, he's peddling lies. Also he's a racist swine. 

Now let's talk about someone who spent his ENTIRE life benefiting from government help and working for the government.  As an adult, this guy never held a job outside of government.  But would Roger Ailes call him LAZY, living off of public money?   Hmmmmm.  

Perhaps the two photos below can explain why.

See, President Obama did actually work in the private sector, and he has been president of the US for over four years, a not-for-the lazy, stressful, difficult job, made even more so by the obstructionist, sabotaging lie-mongerers in the GOP who, in addition to vowing to never cooperate and never compromise with the president, have happily kept alive the suspicion, held by certain morons in their party, that he isn't even an American.  Also, those same cementheads in that unfortunate political party continue to slander and slur his wife, our FLOTUS.

The guy in the second photo below hoped to be the next vice president of the US, and probably will run for the presidency at some point in his all-government, all-the-time career.

Can we guess how many cable news moguls will call the guy in the second photo "LAZY?"

I'm gonna go out on a thin limb and guess "none."

Can you figure out why?

But...but...we don't need special laws to protect certain people's right to vote, because ANTONIN SCALIA and ROGER AILES!

Go read Smartypants on this subject right now!

And then this by Ta-Nahisi Coats in the New York Times.

We Crazy!

Things that don't make sense:

UPDATE BELOW

Guns kill more people. So why does terrorism get all the attention? 

 "The next time you play airport security theater — remove shoes, display laptop, toss water bottle — think of the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Think of the moviegoers in Aurora, Colo., the citizens in Tucson peaceably assembled to meet with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the worshippers at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., and Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old Chicago girl killed by gunfire days after coming to Washington with her high school band for President Obama’s second inauguration.  

[skip]

A commemoration of the march is scheduled to begin Sunday in Selma, led by Mr. Lewis and Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., and will end in Montgomery on Friday. Its urgent purpose is to underscore why the Supreme Court must uphold a central provision of the Voting Rights Act, which is now under challenge in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder. That provision — Section 5 — applies in Alabama and other places where voting discrimination remains much worse than elsewhere in the country. It requires that any change in voting rules be preapproved by the Justice Department or a special court in Washington. Without this provision, there would be no way to prevent new efforts to block blacks and Hispanics from voting or to reduce their electoral power.

Americans suffer assaults on their privacy — they are groped in public and wiretapped en masse — and surrender their constitutional protections against unwarranted searches in the name of the war on terror, yet they cannot muster the will to protect children from mass murder with military-style weapons. We have spent more than $1 trillion on homeland security since Sept. 11, 2001, yet have withheld annual funding of less than $3 million for research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on gun violence."



Get rid of the Voting Rights Act because Antonin Scalia is a proud white man?


"March 7, 1965, became known as Bloody Sunday in the annals of the civil rights struggle in America. That day, around 500 people set out to march the 54 miles from Selma, Ala., to the state capital in Montgomery in support of what would become the Voting Rights Act. The voting rights movement was transformed into a national cause when the marchers were stopped on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they left Selma.

A state trooper told them they were “an unlawful assembly” and ordered them to disperse. When they did not, they were attacked by about 150 troopers and others who wielded billy clubs and tear gas. Fifty-eight people were treated for injuries at a local hospital, including Representative John Lewis, then 25 and chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, for a skull fracture.

[skip]

 The justices heard oral argument on the Shelby County case last Wednesday. This week’s events in Alabama should remind them of the enormous cost many Americans have paid to win the right to vote, and why that remains under persistent threat and must be defended."  --Lincoln Caplan, NYTimes, March 2, 2013



Leonard Pitts on gutting the Voting Rights Act:


"Watching media empires built upon appeals to racial resentment, seeing the injustice system wield mass incarceration as a weapon against black men, bearing witness as the first African-American president produced his long form birth certificate, all helped me understand just how silly we were to believe bigotry was done. So a chill crawled my spine last week as the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could result in gutting the Voting Rights Act. 

That landmark 1965 legislation gave the ballot to black voters who had previously been denied it by discriminatory laws, economic threats, violence and by registrars who challenged them with nonsense questions like, “How many bubbles are in a bar of soap.”

Jon Stewart explain "teh crazy."

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

UPDATE


More things that don't make sense: 

Why do people believe ANYTHING they get from The Daily Caller, or the vomitous Breitbart.crap? 

The story about Senator Menendez has been racing around wingnuttia and not a few easily duped blogs for months and has finally been shown to be false, false, FALSE. 

Is there anything that the pathetic little bow-tied twit, Tucker Carlson can do right? He and his fellow travelers at Breitbart.vomit continue to give a bad name to stupidity. 

 From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

  "This is a pretty definitive exposure of a total fabrication in the Daily Caller. But along with its sister propaganda sheet, Breitbart, what defines this new form of hackery is not that it makes shit up, but that even when it is busted, it keeps up the Baghdad Bob routine. its imperviousness to truth even when it is presented with it. The detachment from reality – the strongest feature of today’s degenerate Republicanism – is embedded in its own fabricated media. That’s partly why they were living in never-never-land even on election day last November. Another piece detailing the DC’s being a party to a con, concludes, after ABC News destroyed the lies: The ABC News story isn’t a game changer; it’s a game ender. 

 Not if you live in what’s left of Tucker Carlson’s brain."

The Attack from the Right on the Voting Rights Act

So the conservative members of the SCOTUS, and especially Chief Justice Roberts, think Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act isn't needed anymore because America has left its racist past behind; and in future elections, conservative governors in their states will be vigilant in making sure that all Americans, regardless of the color of their skin, will be able to vote without suffering long lines and other burdensome requirements, which only purpose is to keep voters from voting for what conservatives perceive as the"wrong" party, the Democratic Party.  It is interesting to remember that the longest lines in Florida, for example, were in heavily Democratic precincts; while in Ohio, cutting short voting hours was proposed for those districts that traditionally vote for the Democratic Party.


These anti-voter tactics are happening now, in the 21st century, 50 years after President Lyndon Johnson signed the VRA.  And these anti-democracy tactics, worthy of tin-pot dictators and totalitarian strongmen, are happening in the land of the free and the home of the brave.  

So the question is:   With evidence in front of our noses of attempts at voter suppression by conservative governors in conservative states, why in hell would the SCOTUS even think of loosening up the law and making it easier to tamper with people's ability to vote?

This article in The Nation answers that question.

And this blog post talks about what the consequences of overturning Section 5. of the VRA will be.  h/t Infidel753

UPDATE:

Leonard Pitts Jr. at The Miami Herald explains why he is no longer naïve about voter rights in Voting Rights Act:  It's not a ‘racial entitlement’: 

Yes, the South has changed — largely because of the law Shelby County seeks to gut. 

Even so, attempts to dilute the black vote have hardly abated. We’ve just traded poll taxes and literacy tests for gerrymandering and Voter ID laws. 

So we can ill afford to be as naïve as a top court conservative at the prospect of softening federal protection of African-American voting rights. “Trust us,” says the South. And the whole weight of history demands a simple question in response. Why?

Chief Justice Roberts Gets It WRONG on Massachusetts Voting

Can't he afford a staff to fact-check his pronouncements?  

Apparently, not.  

But that didn't stop him from making a false statement:





"Chief Justice John Roberts made a claim in the hearing of oral arguments on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Acts that Massachusetts has the worst African American voter participation in the country. Way off the mark, according to the the state's secretary of state as quoted by the Boston Globe.

The problem is, Roberts is woefully wrong on those points, according to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who on Thursday branded Roberts’s assertion a slur and made a declaration of his own. “I’m calling him out,” Galvin said. Galvin was not alone in his view.

Academics and Massachusetts politicians said that Roberts appeared to be misguided. A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to offer supporting evidence of ­Roberts’s view, referring a ­reporter to the court transcript.

 On Thursday, Galvin tried to set the record straight. “We have one of the highest voter registrations in the country,” he said, “so this whole effort to make a cheap-shot point at Massachusetts is deceptive.”



MORE HERE FROM THE BOSTON GLOBE:


“In the state of Massachusetts, we’ve seen a great ­increase in voter participation in communities of color, particularly among African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians,” said Boston city councilor Tito Jackson, who served as political director for Governor Deval Patrick’s most recent campaign. 

In the November 2012 election, there was little difference in voter turnout in Boston neighborhoods with high concentrations of white or black voters. 

In Charlestown, where 80 percent of residents are white, 68 percent of voters cast ballots in November. 

In Roxbury, the traditional heart of Boston’s African-American community, about 64 percent of voters came out to the polls. 

Galvin and political scientists speculated that Roberts drew his conclusions using US Census Bureau data known as “The Current Population Survey,” which collects information on voting and registration every other year. Political scientists say this is one of the few national databases, if not the only one, providing state-by-state voting information. 

 But a review of those census data appears to contradict ­Roberts, showing such states as Washington, Arizona, and ­Minnesota with similar if not bigger gaps between black and white voters. “The concept of black communities in Massachusetts not voting is an old slur, and it’s not true,” Galvin said. “I guess the point [Roberts] is trying to make is Mississippi is doing so much better they don’t need the Voting Rights Act. He can still relay that conclusion, but he shouldn’t be using phony statistics. 

It’s deceptive, and it’s truly disturbing.” According to the census figures, a larger percentage of blacks voted in Mississippi than whites, one percentage point more. But political scientists caution against drawing sweeping conclusions from the census survey or using it to compare states. The black population in nearly one-fourth of states surveyed in 2010 was so small that it was not possible to make statistically reliable comparisons. And the margin of error for nearly another quarter of the states, including Massachusetts, was in the double digits. “The margin of error is huge,” said Michael P. ­McDonald, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University who specializes in American elections. “They’re not reliable numbers.”

Massachusetts has always been the favorite punching bag for conservatives, but for those who take the time to actually learn the facts, this state has much to be envied.  When one looks at the facts, and not dubious statistics, as apparently Roberts did, one can see that Massachusetts has a fine voting record where it concerns minority participation.

It's too bad that people are so willing to believe lies that confirm their prejudices about Massachusetts. 

Just look at the voting percentages in two communities:  Charlestown, with a majority white population, and Roxbury, a heavily African American population, to understand how off the mark Roberts' claim is.  

This seems to be a rampant disease in the conservative community:  Believe your misguided ideas about a liberal community, then look dumb when those ideas are refuted by facts.

Bad going, Mr. Chief Justice.

Between you and Justice Scalia, the SCOTUS has attracted a very unpleasant smell to itself this week.


More here:


Massachusetts 1, John Roberts 0


Meanwhile, another Supreme Court Justice weighs in:

Sequestration Facts

And yes, Bob Woodward WILL regret making an ass of himself in the op-ed piece he wrote, because everyone now understands he didn't get the sequestration issue correct, and no one "threatened" him with anything except the possibility that he would look foolish. Q.E.D.

Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein of the Washington Post give us the facts [not the drama]:


1. Blame Obama — the sequester was his White House’s idea. 


"In our view, what happened is quite straightforward: In 2011, House Republican leaders used their new majority to force their priorities on the Democratically controlled Senate and the president by holding the debt limit hostage to demands for deep and immediate spending cuts. After negotiations between Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner failed (Eric Cantor recently took credit for scuttling a deal), the parties at the eleventh hour settled on a two-part solution: immediate discretionary spending caps that would result in cuts of almost $1 trillion over 10 years; and the creation of a “supercommittee” tasked with reducing the 2012-2021 deficit by another $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion. 

The sequester’s origins can’t be blamed on one person — or one party. Republicans insisted on a trigger for automatic cuts; Jack Lew, then the White House budget director, suggested the specifics, modeled after a sequester-like mechanism Congress used in the 1980s, but with automatic tax increases added. Republicans rejected the latter but, at the time, took credit for the rest. 

Obama took the deal to get a debt-ceiling increase. But the president never accepted the prospect that the sequester would occur, nor did he ever agree to take tax increases off the table. 



 2.) At least the automatic cuts will reduce runaway spending and begin to control the deficit. 

 What runaway spending? 

The $787 billion stimulus was a one-time expenditure that has come and gone. Under current law not including the sequester, non-defense discretionary spending as a share of the economy will shrink to a level not seen in 50 years. Defense spending grew substantially over the past decade, but that pattern has slowed and will soon end. Additional reductions must be achieved intelligently, tied to legitimate national security needs. Across-the-board cuts can have perverse effects on deficits; as services are cut, the fees users pay for those services are lost. For example, sequester-driven furloughs of air-traffic controllers will lead to the number of flights being reduced.



3. The amounts are so small, they won’t hurt much.

 The size of the automatic cuts this fiscal year, $85 billion, looks trivial compared with our $3.7 trillion federal budget. As Post columnist George F. Will has written: “Head for the storm cellar — spending will be cut 2.3 percent! Or: Washington chain-saw massacre — we must scrape by on 97.7 percent of current spending!”

 4. The cuts are so large, they will be catastrophic.

 The administration has released state-by-state estimates of the sequester and highlighted the cutbacks most likely to harm or inconvenience the public. The reality is not so immediate or dramatic. The damage will accumulate in less visible ways, as irrational reductions in public spending impede economic growth and job creation; reduce investments in education, infrastructure and scientific research; and further disrupt the routines of a modern democracy. The longer the sequester remains in place, the more harm is inflicted.

 5. This fight is all about money.

 Those who relish using a sequester — some House Republicans, along with a gaggle of radio talk-show hosts, editorial writers and cable television commentators — say this is one small step toward reducing U.S. deficits and debt. But if the goal were really debt reduction, it would be easy to get a bipartisan deal that would lower the debt enough to meet the original target set by the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission, with roughly a third coming from revenue. The insistence on deep discretionary-spending reductions while calling for even deeper tax cuts shows that the sequester is not about money but about taking a meat ax to government as we know it."


The GOP's plan to obfuscate and obstruct and then blame the president is in plain view.  Whatever pain we as a country may suffer if the trigger is pulled, we can thank the people who would rather be loyal to party purity than to the American people.

And remember this:  The Republicans gave an oath to the man whose plan is to reduce the size of government in order to drown it in a bathtub.  Their goal is to destroy government and take the country into the wilderness, then blame the government for failing in its responsibilities to the American people.

We are a nation of 300 million people who are interdependent in our common well being.  Destroying the government in the way the GOP extremists hope to destroy it will  bring catastrophe to all of us.

We have met the enemy, and they are us!