AP says we have nothing to worry about with Japanese radiation

AP:

Q. Will ocean creatures be harmed by the discharges of the radioactive water?

A. Experts say animals very near the plant may face problems like higher rates of genetic mutations, but that this would probably happen within only maybe a half a mile or so.

Sounds perfectly safe... so long as the fish in the sea don't move beyond their current small area, and so long as other fish from outside of the area don't eat the radioactive fish and then, you know, swim somewhere else, everything will be just fine. Right, because none of that ever happens. I feel so much more confident about this problem now. How could anything possibly go wrong? Read the rest of this post...

Video: Demonic baby can't stop laughing

Okay, it's not demonic, but my God, clearly this baby doesn't have to worry about the Andromeda Strain.

Read the rest of this post...

3: Number of opportunities House Dems offers Repubs today to keep govt open while negotiations continue

From Leader Pelosi's blog:

[J]ust today, Democrats offered three opportunities for Republicans to keep the government open for one week while budget negotiations continue:

The first opportunity was a previous question by Rep. McGovern providing for a common-sense, simple 1 week extension of funding for government operations with no controversial policy riders attached to it, and no additional cuts, so that negotiations can continue without the immediate threat of a government shutdown. Republicans voted down the previous question by a vote of 238-185.

Whip Hoyer offered a second opportunity by offering a unanimous consent agreement to pass a common-sense, simple 1 week extension of funding for government operations with no controversial policy riders attached to it, and no additional cuts, so that negotiations can continue without the immediate threat of a government shutdown. Republicans rejected this request.

The third opportunity was offered by Whip Hoyer providing for a common-sense, simple 1 week extension of funding for government operations with no controversial policy riders attached to it, and no additional cuts, so that negotiations can continue without the immediate threat of a government shutdown but it was ruled of order by the Chair. Whip Hoyer appealed the ruling of the Chair so he could offer the extension. Republicans voted to table the appeal by a vote of 236-187.

Read the rest of this post...

The woman David Prosser called a "total bitch" is the person who will appoint the judge in any recount challenge

No kidding. The following Rachel Maddow segment is good for many reasons, but at 1:50 she drops the bomb. Wisconsin state Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, whom David Prosser called — to her face — a "total bitch," is also the person who will assign a judge to any recount challenge in the WI judicial election that just took place. Interesting.



Our coverage of that little contretemps is here. Synchronicity is just a total b*tch, isn't it? (There's more in that Maddow segment; enjoy.)

By the way, I've been gaming out the various outcomes of a legal challenge relative to whether Justice David Prosser would recuse himself. In a normal world, of course he would recuse himself. I'm not sure this is a normal world.

So just in case, these seem to be the options. Keep in mind that if the Supreme Court is split, the lower court ruling is upheld. This means that — however you get there — if the lower court affirms a Prosser victory, Prosser will recuse himself. There's no reason not to.

But if, by some combination of events, the lower court affirms a Kloppenburg victory, the only way to undo that would be if Prosser doesn't recuse himself. That would allow the 4-3 conservative majority to overturn the unfavorable (to Prosser) lower court ruling.

Whether Prosser would be forced not to vote by some aspect of Wisconsin law, I don't know. As near as I can tell, U.S. Supreme Court justices get to decide recusal for themselves. Hugo Black, for example, refused to recuse himself in the Jewell Ridge Coal case.

If David Prosser gets to decide for himself whether to back away, it's uncertain to me whether shame or the obvious taint of self-dealing would be enough to stop him from plunging ahead. After all, Republican-dominated courts have entered that territory before.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Troops won't get paid but Boehner will if govt shut down

This would be a good time for everyone in Congress to put their money where their mouth is. If they're comfortable with screwing military families, they should be fine with going without a paycheck as well. Why do Teabagging members of Congress hate the military? The Atlantic:

If lawmakers are unable to pass a budget before the April 8 deadline, soldiers will stop getting their paychecks. Meanwhile, President Obama, Speaker Boehner, and the rest of our federally elected representatives will continue to get paid. The comparison is quickly becoming the easiest way to frame the point of how the people who are responsible for averting a government shutdown will be shielded from its impact. Thus, headlines like "Boehner to Be Paid as Soldiers Wait If Government Closes," which is running on Julianna Goldman's Bloomberg report.

The President and members of Congress will be paid during a shutdown, in part because their salaries aren't paid out of regular appropriations bills but instead through a mandatory spending statute. If they want to change that, they'll have to pass new legislation. The Senate unanimously passed such a bill in March, but it went nowhere in the House. Some politicians are smart enough to realize this situation doesn't offer the best optics, which is why Sen. Joe Machin, Barbara Boxer, and several other legislators are now pledging that they won't take a salary if the government shuts down.

Read the rest of this post...

GOP WI Governor: Only reason Dems won in state election was because they had more votes

He's a bit of an airhead, isn't he. Check out how new GOP heartthrob Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, tried to downplay Democratic gains in state elections earlier this week:

While Walker downplayed the significance of Tuesday's elections on Wednesday, saying they were skewed by exceptional turnout in the liberal cities of Madison and Milwaukee, Democrats warned they were only a sign of what's to come.

Walker is saying that the only reason Democrats did so well was because they got more votes, so we shouldn't really count this as a Democratic electoral victory.  Huh?

Not the brightest wheel of cheddar, is he. Read the rest of this post...

GOP joins Tea Party in yelling 'shut it down' about fed govt

Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator wannabe George 'Macaca' Allen asks black reporter, twice, what position he played in basketball, because, you know, he's black

Call it Macaca 2.0. (Background on Macaca here.) Read the rest of this post...

(UPDATE: He's gone) Wisconsin GOP Governor's inexperienced $81,500 new-hire is demoted

UPDATE: He quit, slacker-style, by not showing up to the old gig. The Wisconsin State Journal (h/t Shannyn Moore via Twitter):

A spokesman for Gov. Scott Walker confirmed Thursday that Brian Deschane resigned after the governor took away his $81,500-a-year job with the Department of Commerce.

Deschane, 27, was officially sent back to his old job Wednesday with the Department of Regulation and Licensing, which carries a salary of $64,728 a year. DRL officials said he never showed up.

That didn't take long. Probably needed more time with his (ahem) family.
________

This is a follow-up to our earlier post about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's hiring of an inexperienced son of a prominent lobbyist, a mid-twenties high school graduate with two drunk-driving convictions, to a cozy little $81,500 per year job.

The story of Brian Deshane's promotion broke on April 7 and shocked a lot of people. As state representative Brett Hulsey succinctly put it, "It doesn't look like he's ever had a real job."

It now seems the Governor didn't like the sunshine this story attracted. The kid is now demoted. Daniel Bice at the Journal Sentinel (h/t reader Dale via email, my emphasis throughout):

Brian Deschane - the 27-year-old son of a prominent lobbyist - was demoted on Tuesday following a public uproar over his appointment to a cushy job earning $81,500 per year working in Gov. Scott Walker's administration. ...

On Tuesday, Walker abruptly reversed course and bumped Deschane from his appointed position overseeing dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. The move comes one day after the Journal Sentinel disclosed details of the appointment. ...

Starting Wednesday, the younger Deschane will return to his job as a bureau director at the state Department of Regulation and Licensing, a post he took in mid-January at an annual salary of $64,728. His promotion led to a 26% increase in his pay.

So here's the timeline. Governor Walker's administration:

▪ Appointed young Mr. Deshane in January to a $64,700 job as a bureau director at the Dept. of Regulation and Licensing.

▪ Promoted him to an $81,500 job "overseeing dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce."

▪ Demoted him back to his original $64,700 job one day after the story of his promotion broke.

Really? He's a 27-year-old high school grad with no college degree, two DUIs and almost no management experience. Why isn't he fired, some might ask? One of those asking is Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca:

"If he is going back to that job, I want to make sure he was properly hired for that job in the first place," Barca said. "I am concerned about whether he was hired properly under the civil service system."

The article provides additional information about the job young Deshane was promoted to — head of environmental and regulatory affairs in the state Department of Commerce.

It gets better. To get that job, Deshane had to beat out two other guys: a "former state cabinet secretary under Republican Gov. Scott McCallum with a doctoral degree and eight years' experience overseeing the cleanup of petroleum-contaminated sites"; and "a professional engineer who served since 2003 in the post to which Deschane was appointed."

Neither of these guys was even interviewed. Must have been a no-brainer. After all, as the writer points out, Deshane's father "represents a trade group that gave more than $121,000 to Walker and his running mate."

This is actually just part of a larger and more general problem in Wisconsin. According to Bice's earlier article on the same subject:

State Rep. Brett Hulsey called Deschane's appointment another case of the new administration using state jobs to repay various industries. ...

Hulsey noted that the recently approved law that made collective bargaining changes converts 37 top agency attorneys, communications officials and legislative liaisons from civil service positions to jobs appointed by the governor.

"This is an example of the quality of candidates you're going to get," said Hulsey, owner of the consulting firm Better Environmental Services.

The plan was (and presumably still is) to convert the state Dept. of Commerce into a "public-private hybrid" in charge of attracting businesses to the state. The environmental and regulatory functions would be handled elsewhere.

The Republican reach these days is stunning. If these governors get even a third of what they want, the victory will be significant and could take decades to undo.

Please, continue to give if you can to help recall the Wisconsin Republican 8. There needs to be a price for trying this stuff. Click the link on the right, and as always, thanks.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Glenn Beck cost Fox $40m in advertising

Media Matters:

How much has the advertising exodus cost Fox News? In September 2009, ColorForChange, which was instrumental in launching the Beck ad boycott, published its analysis. Based on advertising rates it concluded that Glenn Beck was bringing in approximately $600,000 less per-week (or approximately $2.4 million per-month), than it was before the boycott began. Keep in mind, that’s when 50 or 60 advertisers had jumped ship. Today, that number hovers between 300-400.

Using that $2.4 million per month estimate, since the fall of 2009, it’s possible the ad-starved Beck show booked nearly $43 million less than it would have if it weren’t facing a boycott. $43 million.

Read the rest of this post...

Over 700 1,300 2,300 3,800 people sign up to take their trash to Boehner's house in case of shutdown

The talk in town is that our trash collection is DC is going to be a victim of any government shutdown. (DC gets a chunk of its budget from the feds, so if the feds stop sending money, part of DC shuts down. On the good side, there's a rumor that meter maids won't be getting paid either.) So someone set up a Facebook page to have everyone to politely bring their garbage to John Boehner's house Saturday at 12:00AM (I'm not sure if that means Friday night or Saturday night), and over 700 people have signed up. Read the rest of this post...

Poll: Miss. Republicans think inter-racial marriage should be illegal

46% of Mississippi Republicans say inter-racial marriage should be illegal, to 40% who say it should be legal, in a new PPP poll (and they're a seriously legit polling outfit).

46% of these hardcore Republican voters believe interracial marriage should be illegal, while 40% think it should be legal.

And it seems Palin does better with the racist crowd.

Palin's net favorability with folks who think interracial marriage should be illegal (+55 at 74/19) is 17 points higher than it is with folks who think interracial marriage should be legal (+38 at 64/26.)

Barbour is the GOP favorite in the state, unless you look at just the ban-inter-racial-marriage crowd, then Huckabee jumps to the head of the list.

If Barbour makes a bid for the White House, he would have home-state support. His 37% in an eight-candidate field puts him at almost a 2:1 advantage over the next contender, neighboring Arkansas’ Mike Huckabee, who earns 19%. Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin each get 10%, with Mitt Romney back at 6%, Michele Bachmann at 5%, Tim Pawlenty at 3%, and Ron Paul at 2%, with 9% undecided or preferring someone else.

Without Barbour in the race, Huckabee gets most of Barbour’s supporters, jumping up to 35%, followed by Palin’s 20%, Gingrich’s 18%, and Romney still way behind at 8%, and the others pretty much running in place. Romney has typically done poorly in Southernstate primary matchups in recent PPP polls, but this is his worst performance yet.

46% of these hardcore Republican voters believe interracial marriage should be illegal, while 40% think it should be legal. With Barbour included, Huckabee gets more support (22%) from the former than the latter (15%), as does Palin (13-6). The support for Bachmann (10-2), Gingrich (13-8), and Pawlenty (4-1) works the opposite way.

The south, and the Republican party, still have a serious racism problem.  And Mississippi is at the head of the pack.  And what's really sick is that 46% of Republicans were willing to admit to a stranger (pollster) that they don't approve of the mingling of the races.  Imagine how high the REAL number is. Read the rest of this post...

Still no deal as shutdown looms and Boehner admits Tea Party controls him

There was a meeting at the White House late last night attended by Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Boehner, but this morning, there's still no deal. From The Hill:

No agreement was reached during the 90-minute Oval Office meeting, but all three said some progress has been made.

"We've narrowed the issues significantly," Reid said, speaking from outside the White House. "I have confidence we can get this done. We're not there yet, but hope lies eternal."

Boehner, appearing with Reid, said the negotiations were productive, but said, "There is no agreement on a number, and there is no agreement on the policy riders."

"There is no reason why we should not be able to complete a deal," Obama said in a brief post-negotiation appearance in the White House briefing room, where he was accompanied by senior staff and Vice President Biden.

Oh, there is a reason. It's not a rational reason. It's driven by the politics of the GOP. The Teabaggers run the show. Yesterday, the Speaker confirmed to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that he is the Tea Party's puppet:

Speaker of the House John Boehner said he is in lockstep with the Tea Party on budget negotiations despite claims from Democrats that there could be a deal if only he could buck the Tea Party.

“Listen, there’s no daylight between the Tea Party and me,” Boehner told me today during our exclusive interview.

“None?” I asked

“None. What they want is they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that’s going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There’s no daylight there,” he said.

That's why there's no deal. Boehner fears the Teabaggers.

It should be a wild day here in DC. I suspect we'll hear a lot of rumors and can expect a lot of breathless reporting from the cable correspondents who are covering this story. For example, on CNN, Senior Political Editor Mark Preston just showed one of his network's "command centers" for the shutdown. Read the rest of this post...

Republicans continue assault on consumer protection

Because helping the middle class who was crushed by the last two recessions is a hard concept to understand. It's easier to simply allow Wall Street to ripoff the country and call the shots. We know that Wall Street can properly control themselves and they've always been known as an honest bunch who only think about the customer. Especially the middle class customers. CNNMoney:

House Republicans on Wednesday detailed a new barrage of legislative measures they plan to pursue that would dilute, delay and curtail powers of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

"This is just the beginning of what will be an ongoing dialogue of how to better reform the CFPB," said Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican during a hearing on Wednesday. "The current structure simply puts too much power in the hands of one individual and does not allow for sufficient oversight of the regulations put forth by the bureau."

The new consumer bureau was the most popular part of the Wall Street reforms passed into law last year. But it was also the most politically controversial, barely emerging after more than a year's worth of legislative wrangling.

Does "popular" really fund a political campaign against Wall Street? Read the rest of this post...

Portugal asks for EU bailout

It took a little longer than many expected but in the end, they got there. So now there's Spain to start thinking about, though there's not enough cash around if that happens. The Guardian:

The dramatic decision came in the middle of a political crisis that has left the country in limbo and with spiralling interest rates on its debt.

"I want to inform the Portuguese that the government decided today to ask ... for financial help, to ensure financing for our country, for our financial system and for our economy," Sócrates said in a televised address. "This is an especially grave moment for our country," he added. "Things will only get worse if nothing's done."

Sócrates said that the bailout, which analysts said could be between €70bn (£61bn) and €80bn was "the last resort".

Read the rest of this post...

Now there are calls for training Libyan rebels

In other words, the mission is expanding. In the age of austerity, how do we have money for this? Maybe the US might think about unloading a war or two before then even allow such discussions among their coalition partners.

Britain is to urge Arab countries to train the disorganised Libyan rebels, and so strengthen their position on the battlefield before negotiations on a ceasefire, senior British defence sources have indicated.

The sources said they were also looking at hiring private security companies, some of which draw on former SAS members, to aid the rebels. These private soldiers could be paid by Arab countries to train the unstructured rebel army.

In what is seen in effect as the second phase of the battle to oust Muammar Gaddafi, it is now being acknowledged that the disorganised Libyan rebels are not going to make headway on their own. Nato member countries are looking at requesting Arab countries, such as Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, to train the rebels, or to fund the training. Qatar and the UAE are already involved in the Nato-led no-fly zone.

One country under consideration for the training is Jordan. Lovely country but a very poor one that relies heavily on US financial aid from the peace process. So let's see where the training money will be generated. Read the rest of this post...