TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

POLITICO reports that the House GOP have put their opposition to gay marriage on a back burner.   This would be terrific if we didn't know they are playing possum because they can't do without the Fundie Bigot vote.   Even Mittens gave $10,000 to NOM, an anti-gay marriage group.

FATS HAS SHILLS ALL OVER THE PLACE

POLITICO published a defense of Fats by a hack and now Mediate does the same thing. This time the clown is "a proud honorary EIB sponsor."  BTW, as of today, Fats has only 171,376 followers on Twitter.

TIDBITS

- Paul Krugman takes down Fat Tony Scalia's talk radio gibberish:

Let’s start with the already famous exchange in which Justice Antonin Scalia compared the purchase of health insurance to the purchase of broccoli, with the implication that if the government can compel you to do the former, it can also compel you to do the latter. That comparison horrified health care experts all across America because health insurance is nothing like broccoli.

Why? When people choose not to buy broccoli, they don’t make broccoli unavailable to those who want it. But when people don’t buy health insurance until they get sick — which is what happens in the absence of a mandate — the resulting worsening of the risk pool makes insurance more expensive, and often unaffordable, for those who remain. As a result, unregulated health insurance basically doesn’t work, and never has.

- (h/t Atrios) Law professor Glenn Reynolds goes Glenda Beck:

Friday, March 30, 2012

Glenn Reynolds: Obama is a "racist hatemonger."

Wow, Putzy's gone full Stormfront.

"President Obama’s interest in the victims of violence is selective: he cares if they look like the hypothetical son he doesn’t have.”

In other words, he’s a racist hatemonger. Just to be clear. So much for hope and change.

I wish he would just call him the n-word and get it over with.

(h/t Hurling Dervish)

Posted by Blue Texan at 11:29 AM

- Gov. Scott "Freedom to Work for Less" Walker loses one battle against the unions:

Federal court strikes down parts of union law
By Bruce Vielmetti and Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel

A federal judge in Madison on Friday ruled that portions of Act 10 - the lightning-rod measure from Gov. Scott Walker that removed most collective bargaining for most public employees - are unconstitutional.

The court sided with state officials in upholding limitations on what can be bargained, but found the two other provisions violated the union members' equal protection and First Amendment rights, considering that the same rules did not apply to unions for public safety workers such as police and firefighters.

"So long as the State of Wisconsin continues to afford ordinary certification and dues deductions to mandatory public safety unions with sweeping bargaining rights, there is no rational basis to deny those rights to voluntary general unions with severely restricted bargaining rights," wrote U.S. District Judge William M. Conley.

I noted before that Walker lied about the rationale for his anti-union measures.

ANECDOTE

I recall a story about a black woman who complained that too many of the black personal care products in a chain store were under lock and key.  She felt this was discriminatory but the store said that those items were often stolen.  I don't recall how this ended but at the time and now I think the store was justified.

If course this brings up other issues, such as the infamous "Driving While Black" and being followed around by store security.  To me, one source of racial discrimination is based on empirical evidence (e.g. store item thefts) but that seems to change over time into a blanket distrust of black people (e.g. black teenager walking in a suburb).

HANNITY IS SUCH A FUCKING SCUMBAG

I had read about the New Black Panthers' bounty of $10,000 on George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, and decided it was just another extremist group trying to get some attention.

Today on his radio show, Sean Hannity tried to blow this up into actual street warfare by claiming that the Panthers want Zimmerman "dead or alive."  I did a little Googling and found a few references to this claim, one from Red State:

Sean: You want a bounty out on Mr. Zimmerman to kill him?


Jay: Yeah – no, not to kill him but to apprehend him.


Sean: They said they wanted him dead or alive.

This story was also reported in Glenda Beck's The Blaze. The Blaze got it from this post at Allvoices which has this as image #5:

and this is the matching text:

The “dead or alive” posters were passed out during a press conference led by Minister Mikhail Muhummud, who called himself the southern regional director for the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Jacksonville, Florida.

“Murdered in cold blood,” the flyer says. “Child killer of Trayvon Martin — Wanted dead or alive.”

So, it seems that Hannity is technically correct but he omitted to mention that this was a Florida branch of the NBPP.

MORE ON "ETERNAL PRINCIPLES" SCALIA

(h/t Atrios)

I noted below that he got smacked around by 3 of his colleagues, one of them the Chief Justice, and Charles Pierce thinks that Scalia may be just "riding out the clock."

UPDATE: A law professor also thinks Scalia may be losing it.

GLENDA BECK STILL A HIT WITH KNST

And Moore Financial Strategies,a local Tucson business is helping to cover the costs of a bus trip to Phoenix for Beck's "comedy show."

RADIO TIDBITS

- Mark "Foamer" Levin must be getting really pissed because Mittens Romney was on Hannity's radio show again and still hasn't gone on Foamer's.  I wonder if Hannity asked Mittens to go on his good buddy's show?

- Fats Limbaugh has survived the outrage, for now.  Tom Taylor and Paul Farhi both report that advertisers are slowly coming back and Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman said the incident was just a normal part of talk radio.

- I'm still hearing a lot of show promos on KNST, the local Clear Channel wingnut station.

ANTONIN SCALIA, THE NEW COURT JESTER

Scalia made fun of the infamous "Cornhusker Kickback" but it's not in the PPACA.  He was also smacked down by 3 of his colleagues:

A suggestion Wednesday from Scalia that forcing insurance companies to cover young people to age 26 on their parents’ plan might help bankrupt the insurance system drew a verbal slap from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She accused Scalia of an about-face from Tuesday, when he argued that young people may not need insurance because they tend to be healthy.

“I thought that the 26-year-olds were saying that they were healthy and didn’t need insurance yesterday. So today they are going to bankrupt the … ” Sotomayor interjected, before trailing off.

Scalia sparked another brush-back when he said it would be arduous for him and his clerks to wade through the massive bill. Justice Stephen Breyer told his conservative colleague to toughen up a bit.

“We can’t reject or accept an argument on severability because it’s a lot of work for us. That’s beside the point,” Breyer said.

Scalia even earned a mild rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who gently suggested that Scalia stop the “frivolity” when he posed a series of hypotheticals about a gunman giving someone a “your money or your life” ultimatum. He later tweaked the scenario to involve “your life or your wife’s life” — an adjustment that drew chuckles from the gallery.

It wasn’t entirely clear what point Scalia was trying to make, but Sotomayor suggested that Scalia wouldn’t be able to go home. Finally, Scalia admitted the hypothetical didn’t work.

“I won’t use that as an example. Forget about it,” Scalia said.

OH YEAH, INSTEAD OF GETTING OUT MORE

maybe Rep. Bobby Rush should be given a brief history of hip-hop musicians.  TIME Magazine has list of 10 unsolved hip-hop murders:

Tupac Shakur
Biggie Smalls (the Notorious B.I.G.)
Jam Master Jay
M-Bone
Scott La Rock
Big L
Magnolia Shorty
Soulja Slim
Mac Dre
Smiley Culture

The EXAMINER has two more:

11. Freaky Tah, 28 (Rapper)
[Died: March 28, 1999]
As a member of the group Lost Boyz, Freaky Tah’s role was far from paramount but he still added some spark to LB tracks. Tah the Lost Boyz were working on their 3rd album, LB For Life, when he was shot and killed by an unknown assailant early Sunday morning while leaving a birthday party at a Sheraton Hotel in Jamaica Queens.

Continue reading on Examiner.com 12 Hip-Hop Artists That Died Too Soon - National Hip-Hop | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/hip-hop-in-national/12-hip-hop-artists-that-died-too-soon#ixzz1qTFSUlRZ

9. Bugz, 21
[Died: May 21st, 1999]
Bugz was an original member of Eminem’s posse, D-12. He was shot and killed during an altercation with a man. And to think that the altercation stemmed from a water-pistol fight. Proof, 32, another member of D-12 was also killed during an altercation in 2006.

Continue reading on Examiner.com 12 Hip-Hop Artists That Died Too Soon - National Hip-Hop | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/hip-hop-in-national/12-hip-hop-artists-that-died-too-soon#ixzz1qTFWUlcv

I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE SOP IS FOR THE SANFORD POLICE DEPT.

But wouldn't they have at least taken a photograph of George Zimmerman to document that he did in fact have a broken nose and bruises? That alone could have forestalled a lot of animosity.

I bring this up now because ABC has obtained a videotape purportedly taken after Zimmerman was picked up by the cops and there doesn't seem to be any blood on Zimmerman.

UPDATE: The ABC video may not show any blood or bruises because Zimmerman had been given medical attention by the Sanforf Fire Dept.   This is from the SPD report:

I GUESS PALIN DIDN'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HER OWN STATE

(h/t Gallup)

Alaska in tied with Massachusetts for having the lowest percentage of "very religious" people.

SOME GOOD LOCAL AZ NEWS

The Arizona State Senate defeated a bill 13-17  to increase the "conscience clause" about covering contraception. Another bill that would have allowed concealed carry on state university campuses has been withdrawn.  Both bills pandered to the Bagger fringe. Well, I hope it's still a fringe in Arizona.

I KNOW THIS IS AN OLD PHOTO

but even back then, didn't their looks tip people off that maybe there was something wrong with them? (h/t Wonkette)

PAUL AND JAN CROUCH, FUNDIE SCAMMERS

NEWSFLASH FOR REP. BOBBY RUSH

He appeared like this on the House floor:

and said this:

"Just because someone wears a hoodie, [it] does not make them a hoodlum."

It DOES make them look like a hoodlum, however, and if Rush doesn't get that, he needs to get out more.

I MISS ART BELL!

Art was the old host of Coast to Coast AM and I used to enjoy listening the show because of the tall tales of UFOs, Aliens and other mysterious events.

John B. Wells is a new host and he seems to be only marginally better than a conservative talk radio gasbag.  Last Saturday, he had Dr. Tim Ball, a global warming denier, on the show and Ball repeated many of the tired wingnut lies about global warming.

I emailed Ball about two of these absurd claims and in response, he wrote in part:

This is in furtherance of taxing everybody on Earth for things beyond our control.

There's no point in my contacting him again.

IS IT A TAX OR NOT?

The penalty in the PPACA for not purchasing health insurance has been described as a tax by some conservatives but the Administration has claimed it isn't a tax.  During the SC hearing today, there was an interesting exchange between Justice Alito and Solicitor General:

13 JUSTICE ALITO: General Verrilli, today you
14 are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you
15 are going to be back and you will be arguing that the
16 penalty is a tax.
17 Has the Court ever held that something that
18 is a tax for purposes of the taxing power under the
19 Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?
20 GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Justice Alito, but
21 the Court has held in a license tax cases that something
22 can be a constitutional exercise of the taxing power
23 whether or not it is called a tax. And that's because
24 the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct tomorrow
25 is different from the nature of the inquiry that we will

1 conduct today. Tomorrow the question is whether
2 Congress has the authority under the taxing power to
3 enact it and the form of words doesn't have a
4 dispositive effect on that analysis. Today we are
5 construing statutory text where the precise choice of
6 words does have a dispositive effect on the analysis.

This reply seems to finesse the issue and Lyle Denniston seems to agree:

Verrilli had to take a bit of a tease that he was arguing on Monday that the mandate was not a tax but would be arguing on Tuesday that it was (a seeming anomaly for which the Solicitor General did have an explanation), but his basic plea to move on to decide what he called “issues of great moment” got a largely sympathetic hearing.

FATS & TWITTER

On March 15th, Fats had over 106,000 followers. Today, after 11 full days, he only has 165,188.  That's not much for a guy who claims to have 20,000,000 listeners.

THE "PRODUCERS" ARE DOING JUST FINE

As I have noted before, (see here, here and here) the "producers" are doing fine so where are all the jobs Fats Limbaugh tells us they make?

From the NY Times:

MAYBE I HAD A "SENIOR MOMENT"

I thought I had written a post about this..

Back in 2007, global warming denialists trumpeted the conclusions of a British judge that Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is a bit over the top.  What they don't tell us is that the judge found the major claims of the film to be scientifically justified.  This is from his written decision:

I turn to AIT, the film. The following is clear:

i) It is substantially founded upon scientific research and fact, albeit that the science is used, in the hands of a talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political programme.

ii) As Mr Chamberlain persuasively sets out at paragraph 11 of his skeleton:

"The Film advances four main scientific hypotheses, each of which is very well supported by research published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and accords with the latest conclusions of the IPCC:

(1) global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise ("climate change");


(2) climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide ("greenhouse gases");


(3) climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations; and


(4) there are measures which individuals and governments can take which will help to reduce climate change or mitigate its effects."

These propositions, Mr Chamberlain submits (and I accept), are supported by a vast quantity of research published in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and by the great majority of the world's climate scientists. Ms Bramman explains, at paragraph 14 of her witness statement, that:

"The position is that the central scientific theme of Al Gore's Film is now accepted by the overwhelming majority of the world's scientific community. That consensus is reflected in the recent report of the IPCC. The role of the IPCC is to assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options and adaptation and mitigation. Hundreds of experts from all over the world contribute to the preparation of IPCC reports, including the Working Group I report on Climate Change 2007: The physical Science basis of climate change, published on 2 February 2007 and the most recent Mitigation of Climate Change, the Summary for Policy-makers published by Working Group III on 4 May 2007. A copy of both documents are annexed to the Witness Statement of Dr Peter Stott. The weight of scientific evidence set out by the IPCC confirms that most of the global average warming over the last 50 years is now regarded as "very likely" to be attributable to man-made greenhouse gas emissions."

For the purposes of this hearing Mr Downes was prepared to accept that the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report represented the present scientific consensus.

FBI CRIME STATISTICS FOR 2010

Tonight I heard Billy Cunningham claim that according to FBI crime statistics, blacks account for 6 times more inter-racial murders than whites and I decided to find out for myself.

I started with the homicide statistics for 2010, the most recent year for which we have complete statistics.

There were 4,849 white murderers and 5,770 black murderers.
There were 6,043 white victims and 6,470 black victims.

For single victim/single offender homicides WHERE THIS DATA IS AVAILABLE,
there were 3,327 white victims. Of these, there were 2,777 white offenders and 447 black offenders.

In the same category, there were 2,720 black victims and of these, there were 218 white offenders and 2,459 black offenders.

Now some elementary calculations.  I omitted the UNKNOWN Victims from the total for White Offenders and Black Offenders to arrive at the denominator.

- White Offender on Black Victim homicides (218) account for 7.17% of White Offender Homicides (3,042).  91.29% are White on White.
- Black Offender on White Victim homicides (447) account for 15.22% of Black Offender Homicides (2,936). 83.75% are Black on Black.

THIS MAY BE THE BEST AVAILABLE EVIDENCE

At least as far as normal civilians are concerned, there really isn't a reason to get talk radio hysterical about Iran's nuclear program.

Special Report: Intel shows Iran nuclear threat not imminent
By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:00pm EDT

(Reuters) - The United States, European allies and even Israel generally agree on three things about Iran's nuclear program: Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead.

Current and former U.S. officials say they are confident that Iran has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of U.N. nuclear inspections.

They also have confidence that any Iranian move toward building a functional nuclear weapon would be detected long before a bomb was made.

I SUPPOSE THIS IS "NRA BAIT"

When I heard some of the 9-11 calls made by George Zimmerman, I was reminded of a one of Phil Hendrie's characters who's  a self-appointed community patrol person.  A little more seriously, I wondered why a bozo like Zimmerman is allowed to carry a gun.

THE GONG SHOW VOTERS AREN'T AS CRAZY AS I THOUGHT

(h/t David Frum)

The GOP voters who show up for the primaries are mostly the party's base and according to this YouGov survey, they aren't as conservative as most of the talk radio gasbags.   This is another piece of data suggesting that the gasbags are nowhere near as popular as they claim.