Teacher Chris Christie yelled at unloads to Salon

By Josh Eidelson

Chris Christie managed to inject some news in his largely suspense-free re-election race when he got into a heated confrontation with teacher Melissa Tomlinson, who challenged him on education at a weekend event.

A member of the country’s largest union, the National Education Association, and of the fledgling Badass Teacher Association, Tomlinson teaches at New Jersey’s Buena Regional middle school.



In an Election Day interview, she told Salon “the crowd cheered when he shouted at me,” and “I left shaking.” What follows is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation on Chris Christie, teachers’ unions, and education reform.

You asked Chris Christie why he calls schools “failure factories.” He says he told you, “It’s never enough for you people.” You say he said, “I’m tired of you people.” Were you surprised by his reaction?

Yes, I was very surprised. Honestly…I was expecting to be totally ignored. The fact that he even acknowledged the question, I think kind of says something about how he feels about what’s actually going on. That maybe he realizes that something is wrong that he doesn’t want to be exposed.

What did you think of his answer to your question about “failure factories”?

“Because they are” – that was the first thing he said to me…In fact, New Jersey schools are not failing right now. We’re above the average for the rest of the country…And then he responded with some of his budgetary numbers about how he has set aside almost $9 billion towards education. When he was first elected, there were education cuts of over $1.3 billion in the state. And due to a lot of the state mandates and inflation and things that are needed for the classrooms, our district is still really, really feeling that original cut.

Why did you go and confront the Governor in the first place?

The Badass Teachers actually is what prompted me to do it. I have been seeing a lot of teachers really saying that they cant take this anymore. They want the public to be aware of what is going on in the country in public education.

So as I see other people stepping up and voicing their opinions, somebody gave me the idea. They had gone and confronted Christie with the same question the day before. So I wanted to keep some uniformity in what we were trying to get an answer for, and I decided to go in that town and ask the same question.

Chris Christie gets talked about in the national media often as a moderate Republican, as a contrast to Ted Cruz, and as a potential presidential candidate. Do you think that’s fair?

No. I don’t feel so.

Do you think there’s anything for other politicians to learn from Chris Christie?

I think that maybe should learn to take a second thought before assessing what will ultimately be our future – an investment in public education is an investment in the future, and people that are qualified to make educational decisions need to be ones that are allowed to have a say in the matter.
I really don’t feel he has [done that]. I don’t. With the appointment [of superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard] in Camden – that gentleman was a Goldman Sachs employee.

What impact do you think Chris Christie has had in your classroom and your school?

Part of the effect he has had, because of his lack of respect for teachers, that’s starting to transfer to the parents in society which in turn is starting to transfer to the students…they’re not respected as adults as much as they were…

Another change is just in the fact that every time that you try to get something for the classroom, the automatic response is, “we don’t have money in the budget.”… I don’t know if you’ve seen the photo essay called “A Blind Eye”…It shows some pictures of the classrooms in New Jersey – they’re just filled with mold and water running down the hallways. And it’s really becoming a disgrace. And he’s letting it happen, so that it looks like the public education system in New Jersey is a failure

The contract deal in Newark, with the support of the AFT local and the national AFT [the country’s other majority teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers], in which there’s peer review – teachers are playing a role in evaluating each other – and there’s what they’re calling “performance bonuses” and some teachers are calling “merit pay,” where a portion of teacher compensation, coming out of money from Mark Zuckerberg, is going to be distributed based on evaluations including test results – what’s your view of that contract and that approach?

I don’t believe in merit pay…The main factor that determines a student’s educational success is the economic climate that they’re growing up in and that’s not something that teachers have any kind of control over, and [they] can’t really be held responsible for that.

What’s your view of the role that your union, the NEA, has played in fights over education in New Jersey and nationally?

From a personal standpoint I believe that NEA needs to look into representing the teachers a little bit better. I will admit until this year I was not a very big union person. You know, I did what my union asked of me…

The Badass Teachers Assocication has received approved to have a caucus this year [at a national NEA gathering]…I know some people have voiced their opinion that they’re really disappointed with how the NEA and the AFT are representing teachers. I do know [AFT President] Randi Weingarten has been very open w communicating with the teachers on various platforms. And she is not definitely you know for everything that is going on so we’re keeping those lines of communication open. NEA, as far as that, I don’t see too much communication from them.

What direction would you like to see the NEA go?

I would like them to start seeking out some people that really have done some research…other union members, and really open those lines of communication so we can all work together towards a common goal for public education.

What’s your view of President Obama’s record on education?

I’m not happy with [Education Secretary] Arne Duncan obviously. I don’t feel that President Obama has really dealt with it all that much…I thought he would really bring about a lot of change…I wish he would step up to the plate more and become a little bit more involved, and start questioning some of the things that are going on.

Assuming Chris Christie is re-elected today, what do you expect to see over the next few years in terms of education in New Jersey?

If Chris Christie is elected today, I expect to see more charter schools in New Jersey that unfortunately will be draining the school budgets even more…I expect to see stronger evaluations that are not valid in their measurements of a teacher’s performance… I would probably expect to see the possibility of a voucher program which is another thing that will just drain the money in our pub education fund even more, a stronger push for the common core curriculum – I know he’s very pro-that -which unfortunately is basically a corporate-run entity that’s being pushed upon schools nationwide, and doesn’t have a lot of educational research, and has not been thoroughly been tested before being forced upon our students.

The Star-Ledger noted that Christie said he’d “be happy to take as many dollars as possible away from failure factories that send children on a non-stop route to prison and to failed dreams, if we could take that money and put it into a place where those families have hope.” What’s your response to that?

Unfortunately charter schools have the right to be more discriminatory against the type of students that they allow in…So you might almost at one point start to see a separation of class within schools. You would see charter schools that would be set up for the elite students and then you would start to see these [other] charter schools that, “OK we need to put these students somewhere, we might as well put them in this charter school.” And you might have your English-language learners, you might have your special-education-classified students. And so we really have to watch that our public education system doesn’t start to mimic what has been going on overall in our society as far as that separation. It’s a real possibility.

Christie’s opponent has called him a “bully.” Do you think that’s fair? Is that how you saw him?

I’m going to be honest…I haven’t seen enough of him to say, “yes, he’s a bully.” Did I feel bullied at the time? Yes I did. I left shaking.

Why shaking?

It was a kind of a scary confrontation. He shouted at me. The crowd shouted at me. The crowd cheered when he shouted at me. People told me I was in the wrong place to be doing this. People need to understand it has to be done – somebody has to do it. This is our lives. This is my passion. This is people’s children that we’re trying to take care of.

More Josh Eidelson.

A Dynasty to Duck

By MAUREEN DOWD

Dick Cheney and Mike Enzi are in a tiff over whether they’re fishing buddies or not.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Enzi, the conservative senator from Wyoming who’s trying to fend off a carpetbagger challenge from Liz Cheney, is lucky he wasn’t hunting buddies with the trigger-happy former vice president.

Then he might not be in the race at all.

One of the best things about the 2008 race was ushering out the incalculably destructive Dick Cheney. Except now, in 2013, he’s once more ominously omnipresent. Even blessed with the gift of a stranger’s heart, and looking so much healthier, he’s still the same nasty bully.

He’s trying to bully Enzi in an attempt to help his daughter — who has never held elected office — muscle her way into the Senate by knocking off the popular three-term incumbent Republican.

Showing that bullying runs in the family, Lynne Cheney told old friend and former Republican Wyoming senator Alan Simpson to “shut up” in an exchange tied to the contentious campaign, in which Simpson is supporting Enzi.

This is one dynasty we want to duck.

Dick Cheney is hawking a book he has written with his cardiologist, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, about his heart transplant at the age of 71. Calling it “a spiritual experience,” he told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos: “I wake up every morning literally with a smile on my face, grateful for another day I never thought I’d see.”

Yet even in this blissed-out state, he still can’t emulate the respectful restraint of his former partner, George W. Bush. He grabs every opportunity to snarl at President Obama, who is still mopping up from the Bush-Cheney misrule, as does his mini-me.

“Obstructing President Obama’s policies and his agenda isn’t actually obstruction; it’s patriotism,” Liz said.

Dick Cheney’s chutzpah extends to charging the Obama administration with “incompetence” in the Middle East and saying that the president has done “enormous damage” to America’s standing around the world.

When Bill O’Reilly asked Cheney on Fox News what “we get out of” the Iraq war, given that “we spent $1 trillion on this with a lot of pain and suffering on the American military,” Cheney repeated his delusion about Saddam’s W.M.D. — the imaginary ones — falling into the hands of terrorists: 

“We eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that.”

And, of course, he disdains Obamacare, telling Rush Limbaugh that it’s “devastating” — begrudging less well-off and well-connected Americans the lifesaving and costly health care he got on us when he was in the White House.

In his “60 Minutes” interview with Dick Cheney, Sanjay Gupta made it clear that Cheney had gotten special treatment to ascend to the vice presidency, given that he’d already had three heart attacks, the first one at 37. As Dr. Gupta noted, the Bush campaign was concerned enough to check with the famed Texas heart surgeon Denton Cooley, who talked to Dr. Reiner and then informed the Bush team — with no examination — that Cheney was in “good health with normal cardiac function.”

“The normal cardiac function wasn’t true,” Dr. Gupta said to Cheney.

“I’m not responsible for that,” replied the man who never takes responsibility for any of his dark deeds. “I don’t know what took place between the doctors.”

Four months after being cleared, Cheney suffered his fourth heart attack during the 2000 recount and had to get a stent put in to open a clogged artery.

If the doctors had not signed off on Cheney’s heart as “normal,” then Cheney would never have been vice president, and Donald Rumsfeld never would have been defense secretary, and Paul Wolfowitz never would have been his deputy, etc., etc. And W. wouldn’t have been pushed and diverted into Iraq.

In this alternative scenario, “It’s Not a Wonderful Life,” where Cheney is not peddling his paranoia, how many Americans would not have lost their lives and limbs?

Dr. Gupta also asked the question that even Cheney’s Republican pals have puzzled over: Could his heart disease, limiting blood flow to the brain, have affected his judgment on the Iraq invasion and torture? Asked if he had ever worried about that, Cheney said “No.”

Speaking to Stephanopoulos, Cheney belittled his daughter’s opponent, saying he had never been his fishing buddy and noting that Liz garnered 25 percent of her funds from Wyoming while Enzi only got 13 percent of his from the state. In sparsely populated Wyoming, it’s not easy to raise money. 

And Liz has gotten a lot of help from daddy’s rich friends.

While other Republican elders, from Jeb Bush to John McCain, chided Tea Party lawmakers for vaingloriously and recklessly closing the government, and National Review warned of “perpetual intra-Republican denunciation,” Dick Cheney gave the shutdown a shout-out. He knows Liz’s best shot is being seen as part of the “new generation” of Tea Partiers rather than a habitual beneficiary of old-fashioned nepotism.

“It’s a normal, healthy reaction, and the fact that the party is having to adjust to it is positive,” he said on the “Today” show about the Tea Party.

You know you’re in trouble when Dick Cheney thinks you’re a force for good.

A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 30, 2013, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: A Dynasty To Duck.

Bill Maher's Rant On The Minimum Wage

October 25, 2013 - Bill Maher ended his show Friday night going after Republican opposition to the minimum wage, calling them out for opposing something that would make people less dependent on government handouts. He targeted McDonalds in particular, saying "until Ronald McDonald starts paying his employees a living wage, he has to wipe that fucking smile off his face."

On the charge minimum wages cut into profits, Maher mockingly explained, "Paying workers is one of those unfortunate expenses of running a business, like taxes or making a product."

He asked, "When did the American dream become a pathway to indentured servitude?" and made the argument that the GOP can have a "smaller government with less handouts" or a low minimum wage, but they can't have both.

And Maher doesn't even eat fast food anyway. He said, "If I want to talk into the face of some red-nosed clown, I'll debate John Bohener."

The Surprising Passions of 11 Brilliant People

You already knew everyone on this list was brilliant and accomplished in his or her chosen field. What you might not have known is that they were also truly devoted to their less publicized passions.

1) Teddy Roosevelt was a man with a lot of hobbies, including obvious ones like hunting, trust busting, and carrying metaphorical sticks. But he was also a passionate boxer and had a brown belt in judo. He once turned heads at a state luncheon by playfully chucking a Swiss diplomat with a judo toss.

2) Napoleon had no rival when it came to battlefield brilliance, so it’s a little surprising that he wasn’t great at his favorite hobby: chess. Although the general supposedly carried a board with him on his military campaigns, he never had much time to practice and was generally regarded as a middling player.

3) Emily Dickinson made more than just amazing poetry – she was also a celebrated baker! Despite being famously shy, Dickinson was sure enough of her bread to enter it in a local competition, in which she won second prize. Of course, since she was Emily Dickinson, poetry was always at play, even in the kitchen – many of her drafts are written on the backs of recipes or ingredient wrappers.

4) Amelia Earhart was passionate about a hobby that’s not usually associated with daredevils: stamp collecting. Earhart frequently carried pieces of mail on her landmark flights. As these pieces became highly collectible, Earhart got in on the fun, acquiring examples of mail she’d flown and showing them at stamp-collecting conventions.

5) Mozart fell ill with smallpox when he was 11 years old, an illness that required several weeks of rest for recovery. The young composer used the down time of his convalescence to pick up a new hobby: card tricks. A local chaplain visited the sick boy and taught him a slew of card tricks that the composer later used to delight his friends.

6) Thomas Edison had a surprisingly impractical passion: concrete. The great inventor so adored concrete that he created a system of molds that would enable builders to simply pour a whole, complete house from concrete. He even had patents for concrete furniture to fill his concrete houses! As you might have noticed, the idea never took off.

7) Thomas Jefferson is so celebrated as a statesman, writer, architect, librarian, and oenophile that it’s easy to miss the fact that he was a celebrated violinist. Jefferson took lessons for most of his life, starting as a young boy, and although accounts of his skill level differ, Jefferson was able to use his musical abilities to woo his wife.

8) Marie Curie stayed pretty busy in the lab – being one of history’s greatest chemists and physicists takes some time – but she also spent a lot of time on her bike. Throughout her life, Curie’s favorite way to unwind was hopping on her bike for long trips that let her explore the outdoors.

9) Abraham Lincoln would have been a surprisingly huge fan of Internet memes. Mary Todd Lincoln was once asked if her husband had any hobbies. Her simple reply: “Cats.”

10) Edith Wharton is remembered for award-winning novels like The Age of Innocence, but her first published book was actually a guide to interior decorating. Throughout her life, the author was a passionate and accomplished interior decorator and garden designer. Wharton even designed her own country home and gardens, “The Mount,” in Lenox, Mass.

11) John Quincy Adams was among our quirkier presidents – he enjoyed skinny dipping in the Potomac and kept a pet alligator in the White House. But he was also an avid collector of ancient coins.

Source

600 Dogs Dead, Thousands Sickened in Connection to Chinese Jerky Treats

If you have a dog or cat that became ill after eating jerky pet treats, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would like to hear from you or your veterinarian.

The agency has repeatedly issued alerts to consumers about reports it has received concerning jerky pet treat-related illnesses involving 3,600 dogs and 10 cats in the U.S. since 2007. Approximately 580 of those pets have died.

To date, FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) has conducted more than 1,200 tests, visited jerky pet treat manufacturers in China and collaborated with colleagues in academia, industry, state labs and foreign governments. Yet the exact cause of the illnesses remains elusive.

To gather even more information, FDA is reaching out to licensed veterinarians and pet owners across the country. "This is one of the most elusive and mysterious outbreaks we've encountered," says CVM Director Bernadette Dunham, DVM, Ph.D. "Our beloved four-legged companions deserve our best effort, and we are giving it."

In a letter addressing U.S. licensed veterinarians, FDA lists what information is needed for labs testing treats and investigating illness and death associated with the treats. In some cases, veterinarians will be asked to provide blood, urine and tissue samples from their patients for further analysis. FDA will request written permission from pet owners and will cover the costs, including shipping, of any tests it requests.

Meanwhile, a consumer fact sheet will accompany the letter to veterinarians so they can alert consumers to the problem and remind them that treats are not essential to a balanced diet. The fact sheet also explains to consumers how they can help FDA's investigation by reporting potential jerky pet treat-related illnesses online or by calling the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator for their state.

What to Look Out For

Within hours of eating treats sold as jerky tenders or strips made of chicken, duck, sweet potatoes and/or dried fruit, some pets have exhibited decreased appetite, decreased activity, vomiting, diarrhea (sometimes with blood or mucus), increased water consumption, and/or increased urination.

Severe cases have involved kidney failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, and a rare kidney disorder.

About 60 percent of cases involved gastrointestinal illness, and about 30 percent involved kidney and urinary systems.

The remaining cases reported various symptoms, such as collapse, convulsions or skin issues.

Most of the jerky treats implicated have been made in China. Manufacturers of pet foods are not required by U.S. law to state the country of origin for each ingredient in their products.

A number of jerky pet treat products were removed from the market in January 2013 after a New York State lab reported finding evidence of up to six drugs in certain jerky pet treats made in China.

While the levels of these drugs were very low and it's unlikely that they caused the illnesses, FDA noted a decrease in reports of jerky-suspected illnesses after the products were removed from the market. FDA believes that the number of reports may have declined simply because fewer jerky treats were available.

Meanwhile, the agency urges pet owners to be cautious about providing jerky treats. If you do provide them and your pet becomes sick, stop the treats immediately, consider seeing your veterinarian, and save any remaining treats and the packaging for possible testing.

What FDA Is Doing

More than 1,200 jerky pet treat samples have been tested since 2011 for a variety of chemical and microbiological contaminants, from antibiotics to metals, pesticides and Salmonella. DNA testing has also been conducted, along with tests for nutritional composition.

In addition to continuing to test jerky pet treat samples within FDA labs, the agency is working with the Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network (Vet-LIRN), an FDA-coordinated network of government and veterinary diagnostic laboratories across the U.S. and Canada. (A summary of the tests is available on Vet-LIRN's webpage.)

Inspections of the facilities in China that manufacture jerky products associated with some of the highest numbers of pet illness reports did not identify the cause of illness. However, they did identify additional paths of investigation, such as the supply chain of some ingredients in the treats. Although FDA inspectors have found no evidence identifying the cause of the spate of illnesses, they did find that one firm used falsified receiving documents for glycerin, a jerky ingredient. Chinese authorities informed FDA that they had seized products at the firm and suspended its exports.

To identify the root cause of this problem, FDA is meeting regularly with regulators in China to share findings. The agency also plans to host Chinese scientists at its veterinary research facility to increase scientific cooperation.

FDA has also reached out to U.S. pet food firms seeking further collaboration on scientific issues and data sharing, and has contracted with diagnostic labs.

"Our fervent hope as animal lovers," says Dunham, "is that we will soon find the cause of—and put a stop to—these illnesses."

This article appears on FDA's Consumer Updates page, which features the latest on all FDA-regulated products.
Oct. 22, 2013

For More Information

• Animal & Veterinary
• Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network
• Pet Food
• Jerky Pet Treats
• FDA Facts: Jerky Pet Treats (PDF - 216KB)
• FDA Voice Blog: Help Us Find Out Why Jerky Treats Are Making Pets Sick/

Related Consumer Updates

• Caution to Dog Owners About Chicken Jerky Products
• Dog Treats May Present Health Hazard [ARCHIVED]
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To The Bunkers!

By Juanita Jean

There are several things that scare the crap outta me before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee in the morning, and of those things, this is #1.

This headline. This one right here. In the morning newspaper.

On the truthfulness side, it most certainly would have to be God calling him because nobody else sure the hell is.

While most of you were ignoring him, I have been keeping an eye on Tom ever since he got indicted, mainly because he lives down the road from me and until they prove that sleazy is not contagious, I am keeping my distance.

Once he left Congress, Tom tried one scheme after another to make money. Most of them would make a monthly posting on his website before the scheme flopped and crashed, until he finally got down to just begging money off a damn street corner. Click the little one to see the big one.

The guy has quit everything he ever tried – the exterminating business, congress, Dancing With the Stars, the book writing circuit … he’s a whiner and wimp and that’s the damn truth.

In case you were wondering, Tom DeLay hasn’t found Jesus. It’s just his sideshow. He says Jesus tells him to do things and then he doesn’t have to accept responsibility when he falls on his face.

Also, it sounds a whole lot better than “my Momma said I have to ….”

So now he’s leading a revolution. Thank you, Pancho Villa.

Former Texas congressman Tom DeLay called on members of the Texas Patriot Tea Party on Tuesday night to join him in a revolution for the Constitution, to “shut down” every part of federal government that is not specifically based on the Constitution.

“It’s time for a constitutional renewal, a constitutional revival,” DeLay said in Burleson, adding that this revival is inherently linked to a “spiritual awakening” he sees happening across the country. He said conservatives have allowed “the left to intimidate us, cut off our heads, put us in prison.”

Holy crap, Dude, that was you. You led the conservatives. You’re late to the Tea Party game. You invented the politics of personal destruction and now you’re leading a revolution against it? Don’t you get dizzy sometime?

And here’s the part that makes me giggle like a little girl.

“It’s time for a revolution,” DeLay said. “I am not advocating for revolution in the streets. But if that’s what it takes … ”

Oh Tom, oh Honey, you’re 5′ 4″, chubby, 67 years old, balding, and have had a face lift or two. Just think how fabulous you’re gonna look taking it to the streets.

Plus, Tom was in Burleson, Texas, making this speech.

I go to Burleson every now and then because I like being the youngest person in town. Burleson is 95.62 white and the median income for a family is $50,432. Yeah, for sure, those people need to be supporting the Tea Party.

Tom has a plan to gain control of the government by having the Tea Party win the House because “the House controls the purse strings.” He also warned them to protect Ted Cruz.

“You will lose Ted Cruz. They will destroy him if you don’t support him,” DeLay warned.

No, no, no, Darlin’, we’re sitting on our hands because Ted Cruz is doing a perfectly competent job of destroying himself.

So the bottom line is that Tom DeLay has a new gig – he wants to make money by selling God and the Constitution. Break a leg, Tom.

Oh, and Tom compares his years of being indicted and convicted to being like Moses in the wilderness. He better watch that Messiah Complex because I think Ted Cruz has the third coast distribution rights on it.

Tom, while you were away, our cow died. So we won’t be needing your bull anymore.

Wackos intend to cage themselves in Idaho

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

I haven't heard such enthusiastic, downright raucous applause since Texas Gov. "Oops" Perry suggested in 2009 that his state just might withdraw from the union. Unfortunately for him, the applauders were not Texans, but the people of the other 49 states.

This year, though, Idaho is the recipient of hip-hip-hoorays from across the country. Why? Because it has been selected as the site of an extraordinary new town to be named "III Citadel." This will be a walled, heavily-fortified, one-square-mile settlement of some 7,000 armed & angry, ideologically-pure, anti-government extremists drawn from cities, towns and gopher holes all across America. Lucky you, Idaho!

Founder and apocalyptic visionary Christian Allen Kerodin, says the Roman numeral III in the name of his Citadel scheme represents what he calls the "3 percenters" – the percentage of Americans who are superpatriot survivalists capable of withstanding the coming economic doomsday and social upheaval. He says that, once established, he and his fellow Citadellians will take it upon themselves to restore America to Americans:

"The Southwest will be purged of Latinos," he explains, and "Enclaves of Muslims such as in Detroit will be culled… by fed-up Americans looking for some payback." In Kerodin's barricaded utopia, everyone older than 13 "must possess an AR-15 assault rifle, five magazines, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition." In an odd comparison, he declares that his last bastion of liberty will be like Disneyland – "a walled, gated private property." Yeah – only Goofyer.

Of course, the III in the Citadel's name could also refer to Kerodin's three felony convictions.

Nonetheless, he's doing America a favor if he can actually bring 7,000 like-minded zealots into his compound. Once they're inside, we can sneak up and lock the gates from the outside.

"7,000 Gun-Loving "Patriots" Living in an Walled Citadel Built Around an Arms Factory in Idaho - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" www.alternet.org , August 15, 2013.

GOP official ousted for 'lazy blacks' comment on 'The Daily Show'

By Steve Benen

 

Following up on Rachel’s opening segment from last night, Don Yelton, a Republican Party official in North Carolina, thought it’d be a good idea to appear on “The Daily Show” and defend his party’s new voter-suppression law. It didn’t turn out well for him or the state GOP.

 

If you missed the interview, it’s a doozy. Yelton, who’s practically a caricature of himself, told Aasif Mandvi the new state voting law is intended to tilt elections in Republicans’ favor, used the “n” word, referenced “lazy black people that wants the government to give them everything,” and said, in all seriousness, that one of his “best friends is black.”

 

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

 

The response came quickly.

A Buncombe County Republican precinct chairman has been asked to resign after making “offensive” comments on “The Daily Show.”

 

Buncombe GOP Chairman Henry Mitchell said Don Yelton officially stepped down from his position Thursday.

 

Mitchell called the remarks “offensive, uniformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party.”

Though Yelton resigned from his post, he told a local television station that he stands by his comments. “This is being picked up in Raleigh, across the state,” he told WLOS in Asheville. “They’re trying to say, ‘Look at this guy. He’s racist.’ The whole question isn’t about racism.”

 

The controversy coincides with a new effort, launched just this week, in which the North Carolina Republican Party is trying to expand its outreach to the African-American community.

 

But in the larger context, there’s a more systemic issue for Republicans to come to terms with. Republicans are, after all, the party of birthers. They’re the party of Rep. Steve “Cantaloupe” King and Gov. Paul “Kiss My Butt” LePage. It was Republican Don Young who talked about “wetbacks” in March, and it was Republican Sarah Palin who talked about “shuck and jive” during the 2012 campaign.

 

It’s also, of course, the party that’s spearheading voter-suppression campaigns in states nationwide, in the most sweeping assault on voting rights since the Jim Crow era.

 

Earlier this year, Colin Powell, himself a Republican, lamented the “dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party,” featuring GOP voices who “still sort of look down on minorities.”

 

It’s a problem that’s not going away.

Watch the impressive first trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The first glimpse of Marvel's upcoming blockbuster offers a surprising, political twist on the superhero genre

By Scott Meslow

With Thor: The Dark World just weeks away from release, Marvel has already started laying the groundwork for the next entry in its extended superhero universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And the impressive first trailer offers a glimpse of a film that looks like the studio's most ambitious and adult offering to date. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set after the events of both the first Captain America and The Avengers, as the hero adjusts to life in the modern day after spending over 50 years frozen in the Arctic before being thawed out. "I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. to protect people," says Captain America (Chris Evans) in the film's trailer. "To build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down. And that makes enemies," replies Robert Redford's Alexander Pierce, making his debut in the Marvel universe.

Anyone who's sorry to see Captain America going solo again after his time with The Avengers will also spot a few welcome familiar faces, including Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who has nearly as large a role as Captain America himself in the trailer.

If the presence of Robert Redford wasn't enough of a tip-off, the trailer makes it clear that Captain America: The Winter Soldier will take a more staunchly political angle than most of the other Marvel franchises. As a man who grew up in the 1930's and 1940's, Captain America is having a difficult time adjusting to a world where the U.S. government is asking its agents to eliminate potential threats before they happen. 

A big-budget superhero movie with the political implications of Showtime's Homeland? If Marvel can actually pull it off, Captain America: The Winter Soldier could well turn out to be the best, brainiest superhero blockbuster it has ever released.

Rose and Time Returns to Ouya

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published Thursday, 24 October 2013

Rose and Time, created by indie developer Sophie Houlden.

Rose and Time has returned to the Ouya store after its creator accepted the changes made to the controversial Free the Games fund.

In September indie developer Sophie Houlden pulled her time-travel stealth game from the Ouya marketplace over Ouya boss Julie Uhrman's lack of action.

Under its $1 million Free the Games Fund, Ouya promised to match contributions to successful Kickstarter games built for the micro-console. At the time the conditions were that the game must have raised at least $50,000, and in return for Ouya's contribution, a six-month exclusivity was agreed.

The first two titles Ouya confirmed to receive a contribution were American Football game Grid Iron Thunder, which asked for $75,000 and ended up with $171,009, and Elementary, My Dear Holmes!, which asked for $50,000. Both games were scrutinized for alleged suspicious backing, and Elementary, My Dear Holmes! saw its Kickstarter suspended after some claimed it was a "scam".

Following the outcry, Ouya announced changes to the Free the Games Fund rules and admitted the program contained "too many loopholes".

Satisfied with the changes, Houlden has now re-launched Rose and Time on Ouya, saying her problems with the company "don't exist any more".

"At the time a lot of developers besides myself were upset at how the Free the Games fund was going and said so," she wrote in a new blog post.

"Then, within a week of chatting with developers (including myself) about how the fund could be improved and what the best outcome for all concerned would be, the Free the Games fund was changed, none of the scam games received a single cent of the fund, the company admitted its mistakes, and was asking for yet more feedback to further improve things.

"Listening to developers, responding quickly, showing humility, and of course showing passion. All the reasons I pulled the game for, were non-existent after just that week. I didn't put the game back on immediately - I'm pretty suspicious so I wanted to keep an eye on things for a while longer - 'If this keeps up for a while I'll put it back for sure' I thought.

"Well, I've seen Ouya listening to developers, I've seen the humility multiple times, I've even chatted to Julie a couple of times in email and on Skype so I am confident at this point that I can no longer justify keeping the game off the console."

Houlden concluded: "Will the company screw up again? Probably. Will they do something that pisses me off? Almost certainly! But I believe when it happens the company will be receptive to criticism and will not be afraid to say 'my bad' if they realize they took a wrong step."

Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef interviewed Uhrman last month to discuss Ouya's problems and the future of the micro-console.

McDonald's advises hungry, sick employees to get welfare benefits

McDonald’s “help?” It’s just so outrageous

Look, by now, everyone knows that McDonald’s doesn’t pay their employees enough to make ends meet. See what happens when Nancy, a Chicagoland McDonald’s employee, calls the McResources “help” line.

And spread the word about the hidden costs of the fast food industry after you have.

Tea Party Logic

Chicken, ham, beef recalled over Listeria concerns

By David Earl

The USDA on Wednesday issued an urgent ‘Class I’ recall of chicken, ham and beef products distributed in Nebraska and Iowa.

The government is concerned some food products may contain the deadly Listeria bacteria. The recall affects 22,800 pounds of food distributed by Reser’s Fine Food, based in Topeka, Kan.

The food was sold under the following brand names: Cobble Street Market, Cross Valley Farms, Reser’s Fine Foods, Stonemill Kitchen, Chef Solutions and Millers. All of the food has ‘use by’ dates ranging from Oct. 23 to Nov. 26.

-- Find specific UPC numbers for the recalled products

Symptoms of Listeria include fever, chills and vomiting. The bacteria is responsible for the deadliest food-borne illness outbreak in American history. In 2011, a Listeria in cantaloupe killed dozens and sickened hundreds more.

Jon Stewart Takes Aim At Health Care Fiasco

All that stands in the way of Democratic electoral success is a mildly competent implementation of the health care policy they battled so hard to keep.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

Philly Cop Stops Black Man, Tells Him ‘All You Do Is Weaken the Fucking Country’

By Mychal Denzel Smith


This video was recorded on September 27 and uploaded to YouTube a few days later. It has recently made the rounds on social media and caught the attention of major news outlets. In it, two Philadelphia police officers stop, detain briefly and question two young black men who are walking down the street. The reason given for the stop is that one of the young men said “Hi” to a drug dealer.

You should watch the video in its entirety:



There are a number of choice quotes to be pulled from this video, my favorite among them the retort from the young man being stopped and who managed to film the incident, “You not protecting me by stopping me when I’m trying to go to work,” but it’s this exchange that has come to define the encounter:

Officer: “We don’t want you here [in Philadelphia], anyway. All you do is weaken the fucking country.”
Young man: “How do I weaken the country? By working?”
Officer: “No, freeloading,”
Young man: “Freeloading on what? I work.”
Officer: “Do you? Where?”
Young man: “[redacted] Country Club.”
Officer: “Doing what?”
Young man: “I’m a server”
Officer: “A server? Serving weed?”

The officer responsible for this racist line of questioning, Philip Nace, was recently placed in the Differential Police Response Unit, a disciplinary unit, for what a police spokesman called “idiotic behavior” after another video surfaced of him knocking down a basketball hoop and, while driving away in a police van, telling the group that was playing “have a good day.” He is being investigated by Internal Affairs.

“But this is one individual,” Lt. John Stanford told the Philadelphia Daily News, “Don’t let this individual put it in your mind that this is how officers act. The vast majority of officers give the residents of this city 110 percent.”

The problem is, as badly as Philadelphia police may want to isolate Nace and his poor behavior, this isn’t the result of mistakenly hiring one racist cop. This is a racist policy supported by a racist society doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Had Nace used softer language, had he asked politely and said “please” and “thank you,” he still would have stopped, searched and collected information on an innocent person for having done nothing more than speaking to someone he passed on the street. Because that’s the policy.

Philadelphia’s use of stop-and-frisk doubled in 2009, two years after the election of Mayor Michael Nutter (in case anyone were led to believe it’s only white mayors and police commissioners responsible for implementing this tactic, both Nutter and Commissioner Charles Ramsey are black), and in a similar fashion to what has recently happened in New York City, it was challenged in court and the city agreed to make adjustments to the policy.

However, it still exists, and still disproportionately targets black and Hispanic men. And one can’t divorce this from the fact that school budgets, affecting mostly black students, have been slashed, while hundreds of millions are being poured into a new prison facility, or the youth curfew that was implemented a few years ago.

Through colorblind language, there exists a concerted effort to criminalize the presence of black and brown youth in public and shuttle them off to bigger, shinier prisons.

They can discipline Nace, even remove him from the force (and they should), but his actions are only a symptom of the larger disease. The more we focus our energy on the Naces of the world, the further we get from a cure.

Mychal Denzel Smith has previously argued that institutional racism persists in the criminal justice system with or without stop-and-frisk programs.

Single mom: Son born out of wedlock snubbed by Marvin Winans' church

By Andrea Isom, Fox 2 News 

DETROIT (WJBK) - Charity Grace lives on the east side of the city with her 2-year-old son, Joshua. The two recently started to attend Perfecting Church under the leadership of Pastor Marvin Winans.

Fox 2 News Headlines

Sunday, a special blessing is planned at the church on East Nevada Street. They are having a dedication service for children two years old and under. Grace was looking forward to having her only child receive this blessing.

"I want to instill values and morals in my son based upon the word of God," said Grace.

She called the church on Tuesday to make arrangements. "I told them I was not married and that's where everything just broke loose."

Grace says she spoke with a woman who told her Pastor Winans' policy is that he is not to bless children of unwed mothers in front of his congregation.

"I've never felt so degraded and disrespected in my life," said Grace.

Rev. W.J. Rideout III of All God's People Church speaks out about injustice outside the church and all over the world. So, we asked if he thought this was an injustice inside the church.

"Every pastor has set up the pattern of his church, the way he feels or deems fit. But as it relates to the scripture, I feel like it's wrong," said  Rideout. "I feel like we're judging, but we're not judging with righteous judgement."

We asked to speak with Pastor Winans about the allegations. He declined an interview.

"What they could do for me is let my son get dedicated, during a week day with one of the elders of my choice," said Grace.

"I'm not speaking against the pastor, but sometimes we make poor decisions," said Rideout.

"I absolutely would not set foot back in the church right now because I feel like they look down upon me and my kind, meaning single moms and unwed mothers. The church should be the last place you should go to be judged and denied," said Grace.

Cat on a Hot Stove

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — PRESIDENT OBAMA won big.

So why did the moment feel so small?

At his victory scold in the State Dining Room on Thursday, the president who yearned to be transformational stood beneath an oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln and demanded . . . a farm bill. He also couldn’t resist taking a holier-than-thou tone toward his tail-between-their-legs Tea Party foes. 

He assumed his favorite role of the shining knight hectoring the benighted: Sir Lecturealot.

“All of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict,” he sermonized. (We have met the enemy and they are . . . bloggers?)

Certainly, the House Republicans who held their breath until the country turned blue acted like foolhardy children on what John McCain called “a fool’s errand.”

The country agreed. So it probably wasn’t necessary for papa to preach, overacting the role of weary parent watching the irresponsible kids make their mistakes.

Sir Lecturealot, who hates selling and explaining and negotiating and cajoling and knocking noggins, always manages to convey tedium at the idea that he actually has to persuade people to come along with him, given the fact that he feels he’s doing what’s right.

Obama says he will now work for an immigration bill and a budget deal with deficit cuts. But as Peter Nicholas and Carol E. Lee pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, the president did not mention his more ambitious goals: hiking the minimum wage, widening access to preschool education, and shoring up bridges and roads.

“Those efforts require bipartisan consensus that may be even more elusive amid the ill will carried over from the budget fight,” they wrote.

Senator McCain, who excoriated the Tea Party zanies and voted with the president, indicated to The Journal that the president had poisoned the well. “A lot of us are resentful that he didn’t negotiate as hard as we think he could have or should have,” he said. He told CNN that if Obama does not “engage” with his adversaries, “obviously you’re not going to be a successful president.”

Democrats, too, chided the president for being the diffident debutante.

“This is a town where it’s not enough to feel you have the right answers,” Leon Panetta, the former congressman, Clinton chief of staff, C.I.A. director and defense chief, pointedly told Washington reporters. “You’ve got to roll up your sleeves, and you’ve got to really engage in the process.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein also urged presidential leadership, noting that Obama “stepped back” partly because he felt “burned” by all the scabrous budget fights. But as Mark Twain said, “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”

And if Obama is anything, he’s a cold cat on a hot stove.

Washington is surpassingly nutty right now, but the founding fathers did build a system designed for factional warfare. When sweet reasonableness doesn’t work, Obama’s default position is didactic disdain. He under-uses the fear and charm cards. When he first saw the White House movie theater, he was surprised there were so many seats beyond what the first family would need. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, probably would have built a balcony and auctioned off seats, if he could have.

As Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick in “The Bridge,” Obama’s “uncanny” abilities need to be properly engaged, or he disengages. “He’s been bored to death his whole life,” she said. “He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Matt Viser wrote in The Boston Globe that, while Obama soared talking about getting past blue-and-red slicing and dicing, the blue states are getting bluer and the red states redder. In his stateside travel schedule, political meetings, staffing and legislative accomplishments, Obama has cleaved to the blue side more than he has tried to reach out to the red side, Viser wrote.

After Sir Lecturealot admonished both parties on their divisiveness in his 2010 State of the Union address, Viser said, the president did not have his first one-on-one with John Boehner for another year and a half, and has only met individually with Mitch McConnell twice.

When the president says “we’ve all got a lot of work to do,” he means Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Obamacare should really be called Pelosicare, as the historian Niall Ferguson noted. And an unyielding Reid made sure Obama didn’t cave as in the past, which had emboldened Republicans to challenge the president this time. Obama is the anti-Lyndon Johnson.

He thinks he can come down from above, de haut en bas, and play the great reconciler, but you can’t reconcile in absentia. You have to be there. You’ve got to be all over these people.

The paradox of Obama is that he believes in his own magical powers, but then he doesn’t turn up to use them.

There’s nothing wrong with a president breaking a sweat somewhere beyond the basketball court.

Problems Persist With Emergency Alert System

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 19, 2013 @11:17PM
from the can-it-be-aliens-next-time-please dept.

 

chicksdaddy writes 

 

"More than six months after hacked Emergency Alert System (EAS) hardware allowed a phony warning about a zombie uprising to air in several U.S. states, a security consulting company is warning that serious issues persist in software from Monroe Electronics, whose equipment was compromised in the earlier attack. 

 

In a blog post, Mike Davis of the firm IOActive said patches issued by Monroe Electronics, the Lyndonville, New York firm that is a leading supplier of EAS hardware, do not adequately address problems raised earlier this year, including the use of 'bad and predictable' log-in credentials. 

 

Further inspection by Davis turned up other problems that were either missed in the initial code review or introduced by the patch. They include the use of “predictable and hard-coded keys and passwords,” as well as web-based backups that were publicly accessible and that contained valid user credentials. 

 

Monroe’s R-189 CAP-EAS product was the target of a hack in February during which EAS equipment operated by broadcasters in Montana, Michigan and other states was compromised and used to issue an alert claiming that the 'dead are rising from their graves,' and advising residents not to attempt to apprehend them. 

 

CAP refers to the Common Alerting Protocol, a successor to EAS. A recent search using the Shodan search engine by University of Florida graduate student Shawn Merdinger found more than 200 Monroe devices still accessible from the public Internet. 66% of those were running vulnerable versions of the Monroe firmware."

You Can Now Find Out Who Died In Your Home

The website that will tell you who died in your house

By Craig Hlavaty of the Houston Chronicle
Monday, October 14, 2013

A South Carolina man has a website with one simple purpose: telling you if someone has died inside your home.

Roy Condrey is the co-CEO and president of Diedinhouse.com, which shows homeowners — or potential buyers — whether or not someone died inside a residence. It’s an especially ghoulish line of work for some, but for those purchasing or selling a home it could mean thousands of dollars.

It’s harder to sell a house for top dollar — even one with every modern amenity — when a buyer knows that something grisly has happened there. It creates a headache for realtors and sellers alike.

The inspiration for the site came when a tenant renting Condrey’s Columbia, S.C.,  property told him the house was haunted. Condrey just assumed there was a law to require disclose a death in a residence, but discovered there is not. He also found that some states have laws that permit sellers and agents to not disclose such information.

“It occurred to me that a service which told people who died in their homes before they moved in would be popular,” says Condrey. “It’s harder to find things like this out than you think.”

Houston real estate agent Danelle Reed with Martha Turner Properties reminds that Texas is a non-disclosure state.

“Per the Texas Association of Realtors Seller’s Disclosure form it is not a requirement to disclose a non-violent death that occurred on the property. However, a violent death — like a murder — must be disclosed,” Reed said.

Reed adds that it is her company’s policy to instruct sellers to disclose any and all material facts that pertain to the property in order for the buying public to make an informed decision.

California and Texas are where Condrey says he gets the most traffic. In California, there are many famous murders and deaths and a fascination with the macabre.

In Texas, you can find the Clear Lake home where Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in June 2001. You can also find the Fort Worth home of Chante Mallard, who in late 2001, hit a homeless man while drunk driving and left him bleeding to death on the hood of her car in her garage while she continued to party. She was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2003.

You can look up reports on the homes of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, murder victims Jose Menendez and Kitty Menendez, and actor Phil Hartman. Condrey shows me records on the house where the Clutter family died in Kansas, the case that was detailed in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Condrey and his small team of developers had been working on the site for a year before launching it on June 1.

Condrey says they’ve processed thousands of information requests. After a user plugs in an address, his site scours a multitude of sources to deliver information on previous owners and whether or not anyone met their demise inside the residence.

The stigma of a death in a home, especially a violent killing, can linger forever.

“It would bother me if I knew someone died in my house,” says Condrey. “For instance, I couldn’t live in a house where there was a murder-suicide.”

A quiet death, Condrey says, would be easier for some to deal with.

Some realtors shun what Condrey does, he says, mainly because he costs them money on what they call “stigmatized properties,” but he says he’s just providing a needed, legitimate service to the public. He’s begun to notice some realtors coming around to the site and even running searches on their own, which means tides are turning.

There was the story of Janet Milliken who moved from California to Pennsylvania in 2007 with her two children, after her husband had died. She bought a house for $610,000, which she later found out had been the site of a murder-suicide a year and a half earlier.

The Milliken family was still reeling from their own experience with death and having curious kids coming by on Halloween to gawk at their home as the place where a man killed himself and his wife didn’t help matters.

Milliken sued for fraud and misrepresentation, claiming the owners and real estate agents duped her.

The judge ruled against her, saying Pennsylvania state law does not require agents to disclose such events to buyers. She’s since appealed to the state Supreme Court.

“Some people don’t have a problem with knowing someone died in their home,” says Condrey. “But when you remind them that this knowledge could affect their home values, they change their tune.”

Condrey has been a guest on numerous morning shows, and he’s even done Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, which was a shot in the arm for business. Response has been positive, Condrey says.

Nearly 8,000 likes on Facebook and 54,000 page views aren’t too shabby for a site that works on what Condrey calls a small budget with only three people on staff. Of course, not everyone buys the $11.99 report, but they still gawk.

Aside from prospective home buyers, Condrey also hears from ghost hunters and those with a morbid curiosity looking for new places to visit.

People are more apt to be OK with a death in home decades and decades back. After all, people spend hundreds of dollars to stay at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum, he says. A more recent or gruesome death is harder to deal with, it seems.

I’ve checked my own apartment and it’s clear, if you were wondering. Would it change my mind about my two-bedroom space? I would probably think twice about staying another year.

Checkout Craig Hlavaty of the Houston Chronicles article, The website that will tell you who died in your house: http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2013/10/the-website-that-will-tell-you-who-died-in-your-house/

The Strangelove Republicans

By Rod Dreher • October 15, 2013, 9:45 P.M.

Today I heard an update on the radio from the fiscal crisis in Washington, and thought, “The Republicans really are going to push us over the edge.” I hope I’m wrong, of course, but it becomes more thinkable with each passing hour. I thought next about how hard we’ve worked to invest wisely, and to sock money away for retirement. If the world wakes up Thursday morning plunging into a 2008-style economic collapse, we could find our investments massively damaged. Some people we know have only now built their nest eggs back up after the 2008 disaster. We could be looking at that.

Or worse.

At least my family doesn’t have to worry about feeding itself. Food stamps in some states are about to be cut off, it appears, absent reopening the government at once. I slammed the Wal-mart food rioters for greed, because that’s exactly what it was. They were no Jean Valjeans. But the government being unable to provide food benefits to poor people because the Republicans will not authorize the money to pay the debts that Congress already incurred? That’s a different story.

Joe Carter, an Evangelical who is nobody’s idea of a liberal, has a post up on the free-market Acton Institute blog saying that Christians ought to oppose the GOP in this matter. Excerpt:

The Bible is clear that when an individual incurs a debt they are required, to the best of their ability, to pay what they owe. But does this same principle apply to governments?

Because of the differences in roles and responsibilities not all principles that apply to the individual apply to the state. However, it seems clear this is one principle that clearly applies to both.

In our form of government we elect representatives to act in our behest, including taking on contractual debt obligations. We may not agree with either the levels of spending or the priorities, but these legislators have been duly elected to incur debts on our behalf that we – or our grandchildren — must pay.For this reason, I believe as Christians we should not refuse to pay for the legal obligations that we have authorized.

In policy terms this means we have two general choices: we can raise the debt limit and borrow money needed to cover our shortfall or we can immediately raise taxes in order to generate the revenues necessary to pay the government’s bills.

Member of Congress who are refusing to raise the debt ceiling (or raise taxes) until their ancillary demands are met are acting immorally, since they are refusing to pay the debts they themselves authorized. Hopefully, they are only bluffing and have no real intention of throwing the country into a financial crisis. But even if they are lying about their true intentions, they are threatening to act immorally if they don’t get their way. As Christians we should find such behavior unacceptable. The fact that they are representing us makes such an action intolerable.

The Republican Party has driven the country to the brink, and this morning, House Republicans bolstered their ranks by … standing together and singing Amazing Grace. It’s Strangelovian. Maybe there won’t be a long-term fallout from this, but I tell you, it’s very hard to see entrusting power to a party that behaves this way, that manufactures crises like this for its own short-term political gain. The Republicans, having lost their mind, have destroyed their brand.

Amazing Grace. They cause this looming disaster — which, make no mistake, would be a global disaster — and then stand there singing a freaking hymn amid the ruins of their party, and the potential crash of our economy! Raving loonies, the lot. Josh Barro is right:

Can you imagine the situation this country would be in if Republicans controlled both houses of Congress right now? Or if we had a President whose administration gets jerked around by Heritage Action in the same way that House Republicans do? It would be a trainwreck, and “reasonable” Republicans like Nunes would still be on television saying they understand it’s a trainwreck, but by golly, operationally, they had no way to stop it.

There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power.

Yes. I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I hope the House flips to the Democrats in 2014, so we can be rid of these nuts. Let Ted Cruz sit in the Senate stewing in his precious bodily fluids, and let Washington get back to the business of governing.