Don't be a dick

Like this:

Diners at eight Gator’s Dockside casual eateries are finding a 1% Affordable Care Act surcharge on their tabs, which comes to 15 cents on a typical $15 lunch tab. Signs on the door and at tables alert diners to the fee, which is also listed separately on the bill.

The Gator Group’s full-time hourly employees won’t actually receive health insurance until December. But the company said it implemented the surcharge now because of the compliance costs it’s facing ahead of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate kicking in in 2015.

“The costs associated with ACA compliance could ultimately close our doors,” the sign reads. “Instead of raising prices on our products to generate the additional revenue needed to cover the costs of ACA compliance, certain Gator’s Dockside locations have implemented a 1% surcharge on all food and beverage purchases only.”

Outsourcing my reaction to John Cole's disdain for this asshat restaurateur.

Sorry, not sorry kids, there's no free lunch

There are some conservatives who would call this a teaching moment. One wonders what lesson they think they're teaching these children.

Up to 40 kids at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City picked up their lunches Tuesday, then watched as the meals were taken and thrown away because of outstanding balances on their accounts — a move that shocked and angered parents.

ason Olsen, a Salt Lake City District spokesman, said the district’s child-nutrition department became aware that Uintah had a large number of students who owed money for lunches. [...]

As a result, the child-nutrition manager visited the school and decided to withhold lunches to deal with the issue, he said.

But cafeteria workers weren’t able to see which children owed money until they had already received lunches, Olsen explained.

The workers then took those lunches from the students and threw them away, he said, because once food is served to one student it can’t be served to another.

The kids who had their lunches confiscated by the child-nutrition manager were handed an orange and told to go get a milk instead.

The school apologized on facebook. They're very sorry all those deadbeat parents, who may or may not have been properly notified, forcced the school to humilate the children in this manner.

This is not new. It's been happening all over the country for some time now. Apparently the new front of the true conservative's war on the poor is literally taking the food out of the mouths of children. They'll fight to the death to force poor women to bear thebabies but once they're born, they're on their own.

Deep tweets

Been offline for days so behind on the SOTU gossip. Somebody, please tell me this is a joke.

.@GrahamBlog: Proud to provide my guest ticket to tonight’s SOTU to Korie Robertson. #DuckDynasty pic.twitter.com/AWIkJfRj5M #scnews #sctweets
— Kevin Bishop (@KevinDBishop) January 28, 2014

Update: Ye gods, it's not a joke.

GOP seeks weak Tea

Old guard GOPers looking to avoid the bloodbath of 2012 primary season have a plan to shut down Tea Party conservatives.

A Republican National Committee meeting to compress the 2016 primary schedule grew heated Thursday, as supporters of rule changes beat back repeated attempts by a handful of conservative activists to torpedo them.

The push to shorten the presidential nominating process and have an early summer convention is an effort to give the eventual nominee time to raise money, unite the GOP, and hopefully avoid excessive infighting in the party. Many Republicans believe the lengthy nominating process in 2012 hurt Mitt Romney's chances.

Virginia Committeeman Morton Blackwell and a half-dozen RNC members from state parties where the party's libertarian wing has wrested control fought hard against a series of changes to stretch the primary process out. Their fear is that a shorter primary season stymies the possibility a lightly funded movement conservative could win the nomination and unfairly benefits cash-flush, establishment candidates.

Well of course it will shut down Tea Party challenges to the establishment picks. That's obviously the point. Now the crackpot cons will find out just how little value they retain for the Republican Party. Good for the GOP, not so good for the Democrats. Our best hope on the left is that the Tea Party crackpots will be so pissed off at being shut out that they splinter off and start their own damn party. Not holding my breath. It's most likely their hatred of libruls will trump their pride and they'll fall in line when it's time to vote.

Update: Just in. The RNC passed the rule change in a landslide vote.

When conservatives commit campaign fraud

Funny thing about conservatives. The same people who vigorously defend voter suppression laws because, five Democratic voters in all of America were caught casting fraudulent votes will instantly wail selective prosecution when one of their own is caught breaking the law. And of course, our Lady of the Winebox, Ms. Althouse is not alone in inquiring if indicting the perp isn't just so much overkill for such a minor crime.

To be clear, I'm not big on the schadenfreude. I take no pleasure in seeing the tiresome blowhard Dinesh D'Souza indicted for campaign finance fraud. I do however find it satisfying to see some small justice visted upon the pompous twit even though I doubt he'll suffer much punishment beyond the embarrassing press for his crime.

Granted D'Souza's violation of the law wasn't the worst crime in the history of campaign frauds:

Dinesh D’Souza, a controversial political commentator, author and former president of King’s College, was indicted today by a grand jury for alleged campaign finance fraud, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office announced this evening.

According to the office, Mr. D’Souza, 52, is charged “with violating the federal campaign finance laws by making illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others and causing false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission in connection with those contributions.”

According to a complaint, Mr. D’Souza contributed $20,000 to a New York Senate candidate’s campaign—five times the legal limit—by using straw donors, whom he later reimbursed.

Still, he did break the law deliberately in order to help out his long time friend. Not buying the "well the law is too complicated and he didn't realize arranging straw donors was illegal. He's not that stupid. However, one wonders why he would take the chance when it was so clear his candidate was going to lose the election. She barely captured around 27% of the vote. Surely the polling would have predicted the trouncing. Given D'Souza's history, one might suspect it was his "little head" doing the thinking on this one. That so rarely ends well.

Raging libido

Well you can't spell Huckster without the Huck and here comes Mike Huckabee peddling his own special brand of social populism. Huck is here to tell us the GOP is not waging a war on wimmin, it's waging a war for the little ladies. The real enemy is those evil oppressive Democrats.

Huckabee said Democrats rely on women believing they are weaker than men and in need of government handouts, including the contraception mandate in Obamacare.

"If the Democrats want to insult the women of America by making them believe that they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing them for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it," Huckabee said. "Let's take that discussion all across America."

Leaving the silly sexytime stuff aside, Uncle Sugar? Interesting choice of words. But yes, there will be discussion now. So there's that...

[image via]

Pro-Life

I'm pro-life in the sense that I want everyone alive to have a decent existence, meaning they have food, shelter and a real opportunity for meaningful work at a living wage. For the rabid pro-life because sanctity of the unborn though, this remains a timeless commentary. [Nick Anderson cartoon]

Deep tweets

I find this uniquely terrifying. No idea on the cultural reference. Kind of hoping it's West Wing and this is a bizarre declaration of candidacy.

Can you tell what our favorite show is? http://t.co/t6VfIV8ajo pic.twitter.com/kEki0rPIcA
— Michele Bachmann (@MicheleBachmann) January 9, 2014

Mitch McConnel: GOP's top ratfucker

Interesting profile piece on how Mitch McConnell rose to become the top gun of GOP ratfuckery. If you wondered how he gets away with his transparent dirty tricks, this would explain it:

McConnell nevertheless manipulates the press masterfully, using methods that are head-smackingly obvious and yet still elude most politicians. He knows exactly what he wants to say, repeats it with emphasis, then stops. He will not be drawn out, and has no compunction about refusing questions. He would never make Boehner’s mistake, because he won’t entertain hypotheticals. “We don’t issue a whole lot of currency,” his spokesman says. What McConnell does say makes news.

At the press conference, reporters jockeyed to throw him off message and extract some further bit that might drive the story forward. His unvarying reply when asked about Boehner was: “It does not make sense to raise taxes in a recession,” a phrase he uttered nine times in barely as many minutes. The effect was like watching a swarm of mosquitoes encounter a bug zapper. After he wrapped up the proceedings, the reporters broke their huddle and scurried to button­hole individual senators. McConnell ignored them and walked off. The story soon dried up. No vote took place. And the elections were, as McConnell intended them to be, an unadulterated referendum on President Obama.

And speaking of manipulated, compliant media, Mitch whined on the Senate floor today about the lost comity of the world's greatest deliberative body.

"What have we become?" cried Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a lengthy floor speech Wednesday afternoon. The Republican leader lamented the "theatrics and the messaging wars" that he said have come to define and "cheapen" the upper chamber today.

"I'm absolutely certain of one thing: the Senate can be better than it is," he said.

"We've gotten too comfortable with doing everything we do here through the prism of the next election, instead of the prism of duty. And everyone suffers as a result," the Republican leader said.

No mention in the articles that Mitch is spewing pure bullshit and he's preemptively accusing Democrats of doing what he and his party are doing themselves. Nor mention of his own significant role in sabotaging the work of the people and destroying what little was left of the dignity of the Senate. But they transcribed this quote nicely:

"If Republicans are fortunate enough to be in the majority next year, amendments will be allowed," he said. "Senators will be respected."

As far as I know, nobody asked him if that included Democratic Senators and I suppose it wouldn't have mattered since he wouldn't have answered anyway. Funny how you never hear the insider media complaining about McConnell's lack of access. Too busy whinging about not being allowed to follow POTUS around when he plays golf. This is why we can't have an informed electorate.

The power of dark money

Not much new in this Koch Brothers rehash. They raised 400 million from undisclosed donors and they had to hide the donors because, all these obscenely wealthy people are deathly afraid of hate mail. Or something. We'll leave aside that you can't get near a Koch Brothers confab with an army of angry citizens. I suspect between the few hundred oligarchs that pretty much run the world, they probably employ the equivalent of the entire Blackwater corporation, or whatever it calls itself these days.

As always, Charlie pinpoints the cause of this corruption. It is of course, Citizens United.

This is what Justice Anthony Kennedy helped bring about with a single sentence:

"We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

In a tragic sense, he was right. In a tragic sense, the system is not corrupt at all. The Koch brothers, and the forces that they represent, are getting exactly what they've paid for. It is an above-the-board transaction, and a fundamentally conservative one at that. The peddling of the public influence is now fully privatized.

Good to remember that it's not just the Kochs. The plutocrats have taken over all our public institutions. I mean, look at who owns CBS, new home of crackpot con propaganda. Who do think they're serving? Pretty sure it's not us little people.

Frank Luntz throws a pity party

I suppose this piece is supposed make us feel sorry for that evil pudgy putz, Frank Luntz who's having a crisis of faith because his slick sloganery isn't doing the job anymore. Damn the little people for failing to kowtow to his superior powers of persuasion. But in the end, the whole interview boils down to this:

Luntz's populism has turned on itself and become its opposite: fear and loathing of the masses. "I am grateful that Occupy Wall Street turned out to be a bunch of crazy, disgusting, rude, horrible people, because they were onto something," he says. "Limbaugh made fun of me when I said that Occupy Wall Street scares me. Because he didn't hear what I hear. He doesn't see what I see." The people are angry. They want more, not because we have not given them enough but because we have given them too much.

Damn the working poor for wanting to live decently. Don't they know adversity builds character? So says the guy with three obscenely opulent residences including his own private bowling alley, which according to him he's never home to use anyway.

Worse yet, he really wants to get out of politics and get into showbiz, but those damn libruls in Hollywood won't return his calls. To which I say, let the scheming miscreant burn in his own personal hell for the rest of his unnatural life. Don't generally wish misfortune even to the most evil among us, but admit I would take some satisfaction in seeing him living under a bridge in a cardboard box after having lost everything. Let him eat phony slogans.

Useful rubes

[Ed Stein cartoon]

George Zimmerman, rip off artist

Apparently, when the hero of the gun crazy crowd isn't busy murdering unarmed teenagers for inciting his personal terror of Skittles, or threatening women, he's taken up more artistic pursuits. Zimmerman's first painting fetched a cool 100K when he put up for auction at EBay this week.

And if that's not enough to gag you, he has fans:

A well-wisher expressed love and support for Zimmerman in a question posted on the eBay auction, telling him there were many people on his side, and the artist replied.

“Thank you so much for the words of kindness and support. I do know how many great Americans are still here, I run into at least 3-5 a day that go out of their way to tell me the same. Your Friend, GZ @therealGeorgeZ.”

Putting aside the disgust, gotta give the guy credit for figuring how to work his grift for the highest return possible. Feel a bit sorry for the winner of the auction though. As it turns out, Georgie's art work wasn't entirely original. Hilariously, it's a rip off of a Democratic Underground logo that was generated from a stock photo. [h/t Atrios]

Which reminded me of the plagiarized Breitbart tribute painting. What it is with crackpot cons and their proclivity to steal real artist's work?

There's war of conservative aggression in the House

Thing about Tea Party cons, they will never back down. It's the prime rule of the crackpot credo. No compromise. No surrender. Never admit you're wrong. So now we're on day two of the BigCon Grifters versus John Boehner. Apparently John has found that mason jar with his balls in it that Charlie Pierce keeps talking about. Channeling his inner honey badger, Boehner don't care what the fuck they do anymore.

Admit I'm admiring him just a little today for finally standing up to them. Wondering how long it's going to last though. This from a charter member of the House Crackpot Caucus on the budget deal doesn't bode well for the Speaker.

The budget deal that emerged this week was crafted to win support of Democrats and Republicans alike, and that's simply a bridge too far for one tea party congressman.

“This bill is not designed to get our vote,” Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) said Wednesday at a meeting hosted by the Heritage Foundation. “This bill is designed to pass with bipartisan support in the House.”

Ye Gods. We can't have that. Our government might actually function as it was intended to by those rascally Founding Fathers. No true conservative can stand for that.

GOP infighting heats up the House

Looks like the one lesson old guard Republicans learned from 2012 is the Tea Party's crackpot conservatism is toxic for the Republican brand. Showing a rare flash of public irritation, it's cear John Boehner has had enough of those people. The crackpot cons were not amused:

Club For Growth issued a statement in response to Boehner's remarks, but didn't mention him by name, and instead lit into the budget agreement he and Ryan are vouching for.

"We stand with Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Coburn, Rand Paul, members of the Republican Study Committee and every other fiscal conservative who opposes the Ryan-Murray deal," Chris Chocola, the group's president. "After carefully reviewing the budget deal, on which we never commented until it was complete, we determined that it would increase the size of government. We support pro-growth proposals when they are considered by Congress. In our evaluation, this isn't one of those."

That would be the same Ted Cruz, Tea Party dreamboat and 2016 dreamer who proudly strutted out of the stadium.

A spokeswoman for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said Tuesday that the lawmaker walked out of Nelson Mandela's memorial service in Johannesburg when Cuban President Raul Castro spoke to the crowd, according to news reports.

Because nothing says presidential material like storming out of a state event because you don't like another world leader. But it's sure to play well with the rubes. Probably be able to fundraise a decent chunk of change off that tantrum.

Boehner is right. It's all about the grift. I'd take more pleasure in watching him reap his rewards for empowering these miscreants in the first place if we weren't all paying the price for his fall. [graphic via]

Can't spell conservative without the con

And by con I mean lying, dissembling, inhumane ideologues who put politics above the public health and safety. In particular, I'm talking about today's alleged scoop by Tucker Carlson's vanity project, The Daily Crapper which breathlessly announced  Cleveland Clinic is cutting staff because Obamacare:

The Cleveland Clinic, which is ranked among the top four U.S. hospitals, is making layoffs and cutting its budget more than $100 million as a direct result of the Affordable Care Act, the Daily Caller has learned.

“The cuts for 2014, about half of those are related to the Affordable Care Act…We anticipate a reduction in workforce,” Cleveland Clinic executive director of communications Eileen Sheil said in an interview with TheDC.

The funny thing about that "scoop" is this was already reported on Sept 18th by numerous news organizations. Furthermore, as analyzed on Oct 11th, the cuts aren't a direct result of Obamacare. It's not that Obamacare didn't alter the reimbursement schedule. It did, but the overall program was designed to lower federal reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid which would have been balanced by increased coverage under Medicaid and additional insurance subscribers who would sign up for affordable polices, thus cancelling out the unpaid debts that previously plagued hospital budgets.

All the parts were designed to work together and probably would have until the Republicans started screwing around with dismantling the balance points like actively discouraging younger, healthier people from signing up at all and GOP governors refusing to expand the Medicaid coverage after the cons on SCOTUS decided providing health care for poor people shouldn't be mandatory in a civil society.

The weird thing is, after the GOP majority in Ohio's state legislature refused to expand Medicaid coverage, Governor Kasich issued an executive order to do it anyway.

This should have solved the much of the lost revenue problem, except crackpot cons sued to keep the poor from getting Medicaid. They won an expedited hearing just recently.

The procedural ruling was a victory for the six Republican members of the Ohio House and two local Right to Life chapters who filed suit after a legislative-spending oversight panel approved the expenditure last week of $2.56 billion in federal aid provided under the Affordable Care Act. The Controlling Board acted at the request of Gov. John Kasich, who took administrative action to expand Medicaid after the Republican-controlled General Assembly refused to approve it.

Which would have been a big win for both Cleveland Clinic and the state coffers.

Expanding coverage to all Ohioans with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level — just under $16,000 a year for an individual — is expected to bring $13 billion in federal money to the state during the next seven years.

In other words, it's a great deal for the states. Of course common sense and humanity are not words in the crackpot Republican  lexicon. Nothing is more important than punishing the poor. They'll fight to the death of every last one of "those people" whom they judge to be undeserving in their relentless attempt to win policy concessions they didn't earn at the ballot box.

Cleveland Clinic should be fine in Ohio, if the governor prevails, but they have bigger problems. Thanks to hospital consolidation over the years, they own hospitals in other GOP controlled states where Republicans are determined to sabotage Obamacare. So in effect, they're not cutting staff because of Obamacare. Once again, the onus rests rather firmly on the crackpot cons of Republican party.

GOP melts down under nuclear option

I'm seeing speculation that the GOPers forced Harry Reid's hand as part of some eleventy dimensional liar's poker move. Maybe it's true that McConnell thinks Harry changing the rules slightly to get governance moving again is going to give him some kind of great cover if he ever gets the Senate gavel back and proceeds to immediately annihilate the filibuster altogether. Of course that assumes McConnell will survive to see that day. Looking at his current re-election chances, that's not necessarily a sure bet.

Whatever sort of devious GOP plot this might be, for the moment their playbook calls for much overwrought indignation, strained analogies to Obamacare and pathetic wailing. Why poor little Rand Paul feels bullied. Witness that mean old bully Harry Reid. [via Roll Call]



Again, you should full text of Reid's remarks because it was actually a good speech but his delivery is so awful. But I'm posting the video because Mitch McConnell is so hilarious. I'm still laughing over the line about how the GOPers have been more than fair to President Obama.

Meanwhile you need fishing waders to slough through the knee deep remains of the crackpot cons' exploded heads on the internets. Trolls are crawling out from every rock to join what passes for the GOP establishment to hurl impotent threats of vengeance. What are they going to do? Obstruct every single damn bill in the Senate out of spite?

And so it begins

Unlikely to end well.

RT @nravitz: Backstage at the @WSJ CEO Council with @rupertmurdoch and @GovChristie pic.twitter.com/Gfl4aZnON8
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) November 18, 2013

Word salad, dummy, dummy

Breaking my personal embargo on 2016 speculation and any mention whatsoever of Klondike Blarbie because this is too delicious not to share.  It's clear our Griftzilla of the Frozen North is testing the waters for her next big grift. She's in Iowa. She's at the fundie confabs. She's dishing up her special brand of bizarre word salad on the Today Show. When asked to explain her alternative proposal for Obamacare, she spewed this out:

"The plan is to allow those things that had been proposed over many years to reform a health-care system in America that certainly does need more help so that there's more competition, there's less tort reform threat, there's less trajectory of the cost increases, and those plans have been proposed over and over again," Palin said.

"And what thwarts those plans? It's the far left," she said "It's President Obama and his supporters who will not allow the Republicans to usher in free market, patient-centered, doctor-patient relationship links to reform health care."

And now I have this song in my head:

The trouble with Obamacare

As I said before the fatal flaw in Obamacare has always been its dependence on BigInsurance to act responsibly in being allowed to remain as the middlemen to health care. I don't think they have any great obligation to inform their policy holders about the competition but the scary cancellation letters forcing consumers to opt out of being flim flammed into high priced products shouldn't be legal. If we had a functioning Congress, they would fix that oversight. But we don't, and many will be cheated.

Which brings us to the second chronic flaw. Confused consumers. The exchanges are complicated. There's a multitude of choices. Guessing a majority of those who need them the most don't have the educational or technical skills to navigate the system. Even among those who do, one anticipates the wade through the process with the same joyous anticipation normally reserved for root canals. Repairing the website won't change that.

Obamacare is far from perfect. We knew that from the beginning. It barely loosens one finger of the chokehold the insurance brokers have on our health care. But it's still better than the status quo. Many people will be breathing easier with health care security.

Millions of people could qualify for federal subsidies that will pay the entire monthly cost of some health care plans being offered in the online marketplaces set up under President Obama's health care law, ...

Far too many will likely fall through the cracks that won't be repaired until the Crackpot Caucus is deposed. That will take a little more time. Everything changes. At its own pace. Sometimes for the better.