Ted "suck on my machine gun Obama" Nugent is headed to the State of the Union....this ought to be fun

So maybe you've heard of Ted Nugent.....if you havnt its no real surprise.  He's a washed up rocker from the late 70's who never had a number 1 album release.

If you have heard of him, its probably more because of his outspoken and staunchly socially conservative views and his frequent appearances, on FOX news, where they try to avoid mentioning that one of his most popular songs "Cat Scratch Fever" is about how much fun it is to fuck anything that moves....until you get syphilis. And that most of his other hits follow in the same vein "If You Can't Lick 'Em...Lick 'Em" "The Harder They Come (The Harder I Get)," "Wang Dang Sweet Poontang" "Pussywhipped" ect.

But anyways, yea that guy has become a FOX news celebrity for family values conservatism....oh and something else too, and its the something else that got him the spot at the state of the union. Gun Rights. Which isnt too shocking since Nugent is on the board of the NRA (just in case you thought Wayne LaPierre had a monopoly on crazy over there)

But see here's the problem, Nugent is well just a bit crazy. See this is his most famous rant on gun rights

And not too surprisingly as it turns out telling elected officials to stick a gun in various parts of their anatomy, while actually brandishing the weapon in question kinda counts a death threat at least according to the US Secret Service......

nor is that the only "death threat" Nugent has made against the president, he also said this last year:

"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year." and added "We need to ride into that battlefield and chop their heads off in November," which you know, got him another visit from his friends at the secret service..... apparently admitting at the annual NRA conference (or any event) your intention to kill the president or die trying, doesnt sit well with some people.

Those comments also got him barred from Ft. Knox and pulled from a tour he was doing there.... apparently the army isn't too thrilled with someone threatening to kill their commander-and-chief. But apparently its not enough to stop you from being invited to the state of the union.

At least its not when your invited by Congressman Steve Stockman, who after Newtown introduced articles of impeachment against Obama for gun control legislation he was proposing, despite the fact that at the time, Obama had yet to say anything about the subject...(and that doesnt even consider the fact the president cant propose legislation in the first place).

Stockman by the way has also announced he plans on doing a "live truth check" of the presidents speech, an announcement he made on twitter, with the harsh tag #YouLie. As in this:

Remember that from 2009? helped kick off the "obstructionist GOP/crazy GOP narrative" that's worked out so well for them since.....

Yep the GOP is going to bring NRA member with a history of threatening to shoot the President to the State of the Union as the guest of a man who may reenact the most infamous (and not in a good way) moment at any state of the union. What could possibly go wrong?

To be fair maybe not much, to be fair as I was writing this I came across this interview with Nugent

“I will be there with a deep, abiding respect for the office of the presidency, I’m not here to represent any specific cause other than freedom and independence and ‘we the people.’ ”

“I will go in at least 20 pounds lighter than I normally walk, I will be going in sans the hardware store on my belt. I live a well-armed life, and I’ve got to demilitarize before I go.”

So at least he's got the common sense to leave his guns at home, and not walk into a room filled with cops and secret service after telling the man he's coming to see to suck on said gun. And maybe he will actually show his respect for the office and just listen and enjoy the "honor" of hearing it live (i put honor in quotes simply because I would be bored shitless not because of anything having to do with Nugent or Obama).

Well at least during the speech anyways. See Stockman and other republicans have made it known that Mr. Nugent will have plenty to say immediately following the end of the presidents remarks, and are actively lobbying news reporters to cover him.

But it turns out that's a bit of a problem too.

You see by "tradition", (i'll explain the "" on that tomorrow) immediately following the end of the presidents remarks the opposition party the republicans in this case, give a short counter speech to the president. And this year the retort is set to be given by Fl Senator Marco Rubio, who is considered an early favorite for the Republican nomination in 2016, or well pretty much any time in the future, and is supposed to be helping the GOP with their "pretending we like Latinos" Spanish outreach, is supposed to be delivering the responce in both Spanish and English.

Which of course many people may not see if their networks cut to cover Nugent to see if he's gonna say anything outrageous or stupid instead.

Which means best case for the GOP is they get 24 hours of bad press for inviting someone as crazy as Nugent to the State of the Union (even conservative websites are referencing the machine gun comment as "What he is most known for) AND get to step all over the national roll-out of one of their future presidential candidates and their Latino outreach (fake as it is).

And that all assumes neither Stockman or Nugent do anything stupid......

Ok I admit, this isnt quite as bad PR wise as yeterdays post on trying to hit the Benghazi issue again was, but seriously it can not be this hard to get a decent PR guy and have him say "guys really you might want to rethink this, its a no win situation".  

Insanity is doing the same thing 5 times and expecting different results, Benghazi edition

Ok so who doesnt remember this?

That would be Mitt Romney getting fact checked live on TV on Libya and Benghazi, and it became THE moment of the last presidential debate, that solidified the idea that Mitt Romney had no idea about anything on foreign policy.

Now I freely admit, that is an edited tape. It ends in the middle of Candy Crawley's sentence, before she mentions that Romney is also correct that it took 2 weeks to for the Administration to say their was not also a mob presence at the attack. But I picked the edited version for a reason, thats the only half people remember.

Then of course famously, John McCain decided to jump on the FAILwagon, and try his hand at it.

Specifically McCain decided to attack UN ambassador Susan Rice (who has as much to do with embassy security as I do) for saying this on the air

'"Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy — sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that — in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent."

Which as it turned out were based on the official talking points put out by the white house. Which was the explanation for why John McCain had said the same thing the day before Susan Rice....

So yea thats kinda awkward. Didnt help that it looked like a transparent ploy to get John Kerry appointed Secretary of State, so that Scott Brown, who had just lost his senate seat, could run for Kerry's seat and head back to Washington.

Which  kinda hit a snag, when it turned out Scott Brown doesnt want to run. So yea it was all for nothing, and now as a result, no one seems to give a damn about anything John McCain is doing. Apparently he has no credibility left.

Not that that stopped more Republican's from jumping on the FAILway.

Next up, Rand Paul, who decided to attack Hilary Clinton, during senate hearing on Benghazi ....the problem here was that Mr. Paul's question was about Turkish involvement in Benghazi, which led pretty much everyone watching to have the same reaction I'm sure Mrs. Clinton had in her head "Dafuq?"

Didnt help either that totally out of far right field came mere minutes after Rand Paul suggested if he was ever president [HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA] he'd have fired Clinton for not knowing anything about what was going on....Irony thy name is Rand Paul.

And by the way, coming out of those hearing, now former Sec. Clinton is the most popular politician in the country. So yea, clearly that worked out well for the GOP.....

Nor was Paul the last republican to throw his credibility under the bus.

Next up Senator Ron Johnson, who had this very awkward exchange with incoming Sec. of State John Kerry at his confirmation hearings the next day.

See Johnson asked Kerry if Kerry if Kerry would work with him on a permanent basis to find out what really happened at Benghazi, at which point Kerry then said "I think it was very clear… were you at the briefing with the tapes?"

Johnson it should be pointed on, serves on the committee that Kerry chaired, meaning any briefing for that committee of any kind both men could have been at.

Now because of that fact, Johnson had to tell the truth, because of course Kerry already knew the answer.
"No" Johnson quickly replied. Then proceeded to sit there as Kerry pointed out "Well, there was a briefing with tapes, which we all saw—those of us who went to it—uh, which made it crystal clear."

In otherwords, "Sen Johnson, how about doing your job?" So yea, as Queen would say, another one bites the dust.

All of these by the way, serves actually as BACKGROUND to the real story here. Which is that one republican still thinks this is a good idea to attack on. Enter Lindsey Graham.

Who went on "Face the nation" today and threatened to place a hold on the nominations of the Sec. of Defense and CIA head unless he gets answers to a few questions

From the Face the Nation transcript:

BOB SCHIEFFER (Host): I’m not sure I understand. What do you plan to do if they don’t give you an answer? Are you going to put a hold on these two nominations?

GRAHAM: Yes…How could Susan Rice come on to your show and say there’s no evidence of a terrorist attack when the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said they knew that night? I think that was a misleading narrative three weeks before our election.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just make sure, because you’re about to make some news here, I think. You are saying that you are going to block the nominations — you’re going to block them from coming to a vote until you get an answer to this? Now, John McCain has already said he doesn’t think the Republicans ought to filibuster this. What will you do? You’re just going to put a hold on it? [...]

GRAHAM: I want to know who changed the talking points. Who took the references to Al Qaeda out of the talking points given to Susan Rice? We still don’t know…. I want to know what our president did. What did he do as commander in chief? Did he ever pick up the phone and call anybody? I think this is the stuff the country needs to know.

Now of all the republicans, Graham has reached a new level of insanity.

1) We already did the Susan Rice thing. You can ask John McCain about it, he read the same talking points she did. And believe it or not, Susan Rice still has nothing to do with Embassy security.

2) You know what every single person (other then Romney and Clinton) mentioned in this blog has in common? they ALL sit on one of the committees actually responsible for Embassy Security, and giving the state department money for said security, (Which for the record Clinton requested and they refused). So clearly none of these guys have heard why its a bad idea to point fingers (you got 3 pointing back at you)

3) Chronology: Graham was elected to congress in 1995 and placed on a committee that happens to be responsible for embassy security. US embassies have been attacked on a near yearly basis since Bill Clinton was in office in 1998. The longest stretch of time without an attack is a tie. 1 chunk from the end of 2008 to the middle of 2010, and the second from the middle of 2010, until Benghazi.  Also known as most of the first Obama term.....
 
Which means for all of those attack, Lindsey Graham has been on the Committee responsible for embassy security (in either the house or senate as he moved chambers in 2003)

Oh by the way, the attack in 2010, that you likely never heard of, killed 8. But you know why Lindsey Graham, and the rest of the GOP never had their panties in a twist in 2010? it wasnt a presidential election year,

Also by the way, there was another attack on an American Embassy, last week over in Turkey....but the problem is, it only killed 1 person, so Graham wont get any attention talking about it.

4) In earlier comments in that same interview (which I'll post in full below, I just couldnt find a full printed transcript) Graham blamed the incompetence of the current Sec of Defense and the current head of CIA for Bengahzi.

Now lets assume Graham is right....take a look at his threat. He's threatening to block the confirmation of their successors. Which means the incompetent people STAY IN THE JOB. Seems to me, if you actually thought they were incompetent you would want them replaced as fast as possible, not force them to stick around longer. Because we actually do kinda need a Sec of Defense and a CIA head...those are not the agencies you want running around with no one managing.
 
In other words Graham's just throwing a fake temper tantrum. In fact if we sum up Graham's appearence we get this:

Shorter Lindsey Graham: "Until I get to see the presidents personal diary, about one of the least lethal attack on an american embassy in my entire tenure sitting on the committees [partly] responsible for embassy security,  and get to see who prepped a totally unrelated to the event black woman for TV, I am going to pretend to be outraged and shut down the entire US military apparatus, I mean its not like we were attacked and our embassies use Marines for security or anything. I mean I'd ask for his birth certificate but that is so 2009....."

The upside is, like Romney, McCain, Paul, and Johnson before him, Graham is likely going to get badly embarrassed, and never be credible enough for anyone to give a fuck about again.

But the real question is actually this: How many more times do republicans need to try this before they get it. It doesnt work, its not going to work, and honestly Seppuku is faster, less annoying and less painful to watch.....

I mean I'm all for flushing the GOP down the toilet, but even my dog knew better then to keep running into a closed door.....just saying.

(now for full context, as much of Lindsey's graham's interview on Face the Nation I can get...its about 4 1/2 minutes and I've had some issues getting it to embed which is why i didn't want to post it in the middle of the blog. Sorry about the link, best I can do.)

The GOP is literally pissing your money away.

So I dont know if you've heard, but according to the Republican party we have a massive catastrophic apocalyptic society destroying spending crisis on our hands.

In fact if we dont balance the budget in the next 15 minutes we are all going to die.

In short EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Now of course this Fiscapocalyse is cause 100% by 1 thing and 1 thing only, unnecessary and wasteful public spending. Most of which we know is totally because we have a "society of takers" (to quote the most recent losing vice presidential candidate.

Which brings us to the new republican idea to save money/stop spending wastefully: Drug test the "takers" if you want welfare you have to prove your not using drugs, and are instead using the money for its intended purpose, paying for blowjobs from hookers after coming home from the local bar.

But seriously, lets look at the assumption here: in order for this to save money of any real noticeable amount the overwhelming amount of people on social security, medicaid, food stamps, unemployment, ect have to be on drugs.

And as a side note, if that many people were on drugs, it would probibly be time to just surrender in the war on drugs since that would mean its [an even bigger] failure [then we all already know it is]

But anyways where was I? Oh yea, so yea so basically yea, state legislators in Kansas, Ohio and Virginia have decided that before they will give you a red cent of money....even if it money you already paid into (like social security and unemployment) you gotta piss in a cup.

They figure between the people who pop positive and those too afraid to pee in the cup, they will quickly get their states out of debt though thousands of dollars saved by not paying welfare.

And I mean I suppose at a time when their are still 3 applicants for every 1 job (meaning a shit ton of people are on unemployment)  if the majority of them, and therefore the population as a whole, were drug users you would save some money, so I guess since I'm feeling generous I'll file this under the "sounds good in theory...if you dont think to hard category"

But luckily for us, its not just a theory.

See Florida already did this last year. In fact they spent a shit ton of money on the project (over a million dollars) and they discovered that......pretty much no welfare recipients are on drugs.

Ok yea, its not quite 0, it's 2.6% of welfare recipients in Florida are on drugs.

Which is kinda a problem, given that stopping 2.6% of welfare payments doesnt really come close to a million dollars in savings. Basically they lost MORE money doing this then they would have if they didnt.

And there is no particular reason to think Florida has an atypically low drug using population. So we can likely assume something close to that 2.6% will hold out in every state.

Which means Virginia is about to propose a bill to require you to piss in a cup and pass a drug test to get your social security check.

now the cost of the cups (and the lab work) will run the state of Virginia about $1.5 million according to the bills sponsor.

Now if we shave off  2.6% of Virginia's welfare payments that they wont be paying to the drug addicts, they will save $229,000.

In other word's Virginia's net savings will be -$1,271,000.

And my guess is the math is equally as bad for Kansas and Ohio, they just havnt yet said how much implementing the programs will cost.

Still as anyone who listened to Mitt Romney's economic plan knows, Republicans are never ones to let a little thing like "math" slow them down.

So despite having already tired, and proven this will lose money in the long run, the GOP is going full steam ahead.

Because in order to prove that 47% or 60% (depending on if you believe Romney or Ryan) of the country are the worthless moochers who spend tax dollars on drugs that the GOP believes them to be, the GOP is ready to literally piss away a bunch of money........

The abridged week in stupid.

So yea weeks go by where not enough people say stupid things for me to bother doing a "this week in stupid" style post. In fact we get some weeks where nothing stupid is said at all.

But in the 3 1/2 months I've been doing this, I've never yet had a week where I had a clear, undisputed winner for stupid comment of at least the week, but cant find any runners up, and it also wasnt complex enough to merit its own post.

Now if I hadnt done the individual post on Marco Rubio not knowing what the Secretary of Defense does, I might have a legitimate second contender. But sadly I already ripped that issue about as much as I can. So that kinda left me in a tough spot. Basically what I'm saying is I had the admittedly scrape the bottom of the barrel to get some of the other "contenders" this week.  Hence the "abridged" week, less stupid then normal, still mocking.

Now with that disclaimer out of the way, let the slightly smarter then usual stampede of stupid begin:

First up, North Carolina Congresswomen and professional wack job Virginia Foxx, who while defending for profit colleges said this "They came for the for-profits, and I didn't speak up...".

First let me just say as far as for profit colleges I got no horse in the race. Some do appear to be scams and some do appear to be very helpful to the right people. So I guess honestly I'd have to be kinda on Rep. Foxx's side since I dont think attacking ALL for profit colleges is good.

That said for those who missed the reference, a German once said of those Germans who didnt stand up against the Nazi's

"First they came for the Communists

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews

And I did not speak out 

Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me

And there was no one left

To speak out for me"

So yea basically Rep Foxx is comparing saying For profits colleges are scams and should be shut down, to the murder of several hundred thousand people.

She may not win this week in stupid comments, but she will win the award for most grossly overstated metaphor of the week.

Next up in this observation of the obtuse, Senator Roy Blunt (and possibly the US senate).

Here's the thing about politics, any politician wants to be on the popular side of every issue, or at least what they believe it the popular side.

Now of course sometimes when an issue is close a politician might take the less popular side, if they believe they have something to gain, or that the majority of their voters hold a minority opinion.

But when something is pretty clearly unanimous you almost never see someone on the opposite side of the issue.

Enter Senator Blunt, who said this " I’m not sure the Senate can produce any legislation that changes [background checks]. I’m willing to look at it — I have in the past voted for ways to expand background checks at gun shows. I’m not for a law that would mean that two neighbors couldn’t be able to trade shot guns….most of my energy is going on the mental health side."

Now heres the thing, according to gallop 92% of the country approve of universal background checks.

92% of the country cant even agree on how the heck you pronounce Missouri, or that Hitler was evil or that Hawaii is a US State.

yet somehow Senator Blunt at least believes their is something to be gained by opposing this, and maybe the entire senate agrees with him (I doubt, I find it much more likely Sen Blunts status as one of the top recipients of NRA donations is warping his view).

And they wonder why the only thing OTHER then Universal Background Checks that 92% of the public can agree on is that congress is doing a horrible job.

Moving on to number 3, and this actually isnt stupid as much as it nicely transitions into our winner.

So for the last few days Republicans have been, rightly, grilling the hell out of the Obama administration for their newly revealed pratice of targeted killing of american citizens and the standards associated with  said killings.

Now at the same time the Obama administration is getting its second term cabinet confirmed by the Senate. the most recent confirmation hearing was on Obama's nominee to head up the CIA. Now the CIA chief is likely the person who is actually going to carry out most or all of these targeted killings.

And the Obama nominee is a guy named John Brennan who was an early and outspoken critic of the Bush era waterboarding AND drone strike on civilian policies. He's also one of the people who helped come up with the Obama era justification for his drone strikes.

In otherwords he is a ripe target for being hammered on the issue and for hypocrisy.

And then GOP Senator Richard Burr happened. Now Burr is one of the many republicans who is absolutely outraged by the Obama/Bush programs....or well he is now. See this is how he started his line of questioning to Mr. Brennan.

" I’ll be brief. You’re on your fourth glass of water and I don’t want to be accused of waterboarding you."
Yea a torture joke. Now remember Burr is supposed to be gearing up to attack Brennan on flip flopping on Obama/Bush policies, and the seriousness of them.

And he starts by revealing that while Brennan's new support might well be politically motivated that makes it only as hollow as Senator Burr's now revealed as fake outrage.

Showing that your doing exactly what your about to, but havnt yet, accused the other guy of doing takes a special kind of stupid.


Speaking of a special kind of stupid, we have our winner.

Never one to pass up an opportunity to turn a legitimate major political scandal into a cheap attack at an unrelated group, Bill Reilly said this on his FOX News show

"Remember the outcry about waterboarding  You know, everybody jumping up and down? Uh, NBC News, I thought they were going to, like, melt down over there. You heard anything on NBC about the drones?"
In otherwords: "you can tell that liberals dont actually believe water-boarding was torture and were just political opportunists because NBC wont cover the bad things their guy does, just like they always falsely claim we here at FOX did with bush. But see we mentioned the waterboarding and they wont mention the drones."

Now I should point out, his full comments are even worse (see video below). O'Reilly got his guest to agree NBC wasnt covering the story, and that NO ONE on his staff had seen a thing on NBC about drones. He then spend the next two minutes coming up with reasons why NBC wasnt covering the story, concluding they weren't covering it to protect the president.  

Now look normally this could be dismissed as the normal sniping FOX and NBC do at each other, because the FCC has decided it would be obscene for them to just whip their dicks out, lay them on the anchor table and settle the issue once and for all.

But it this case this migrated to incredibly stupid...and that's the generous interpretation.

See the only reason we know anything at all about the Obama targeted killing program and memo's passed around behind it is because of one guy, the guy who actually found out about the memo. That would be a man by the name of Michael Isikoff.

Or to use his full title National Investigative correspondent for NBC News, Michael Isikoff.

See without Isikoff and NBC their would be no drone story right now. They broke it. The only reason Bill O'Reilly even knew there was a drone story he could attack someone for is because of NBC news. It's their story. No one else had it or apprently knew anything about it. Yes we all knew about the targeted killing for a while, but the memos and needed justifications for said killing are new and only NBC had it.

This is basically the equivalent of accusing Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of being authoritarian thugs protecting president Nixon because they failed to report on Watergate.

Now of course Bill is going to apologize for being what he would call a "Pin Head" and proving his entire staff is absolutly incompetent or just corrupt, right? nope.

"I put forth that over at NBC News and other media places, they were hysterical over water-boarding but muted over President Obama's drone attacks, at least until yesterday.

"Immediately, the far-left machine cranked up, 'O'Reilly didn't say that NBC News broke the drone memo story. He's a deceiver.' True, I didn't say NBC broke the memo story because we weren't talking about that. Water-boarding versus drone strikes. Well, once again, we have a propaganda campaign designed to make ignorant people on the left, even more ignorant.

"Factor Tip of the Day: don't deal with loons. I have to. You shouldn't have to. And that is it for us tonight."

in other words he ran for the freaking hills, claiming apparently he was both not talking about Drone Strikes and criticizing NBC for not covering the Drone story before they broke the story.

So yea basically NBC is bad, because they cant do preemptive news on future stories that didnt exist at the time and I wasnt talking about them anyways. And anyone who says otherwise is crazy and shouldnt be listened to

So congrats Mr. O'Reilly, not only are you the stupidest person of the week (and again I'm being generous in assuming it was stupidity and not an outright intentional attempt to lie and misinform your viewers so that you could exploit a major and important scandal for your personal gain in a petty feud) you were actually SO bad, that I felt compelled to dig up 3 not really that stupid comments just so that you would have competition to win the award of stupidest person of the week, something I have never had to do for my previous winners.

Which I think makes you my new "stupidest person in the history of my blog". Congratulations on your big win, and I hope you'll understand when I say long may you reign.    

Why a Colorado Fetus is the Catholic Kobayashi Maru

So out in Colorado, a few years ago a woman named Lori Stodghill died at hospital due to the failure of her doctor to respond to his page. At the time of her death Mrs. Stodghill was 7 months pregnant with twins, and her husband believes that although nothing could be for his wife, had the doctor arrived the twins would have been saved. So he sued the hospital on two counts of wrongful death.

The hospital of course correctly pointed out that under Colorado law "Person" applies only to those who were born alive, which the twin fetuses were not, and therefore the hospital can not be sued for the death of a non person (persons in this case).

Not surprisingly since they were legally correct, the hospital won. Normally that would be the end of the story, but not here.

See the hospital that was sued was St. Thomas More Hospital, which the name might tip you off to, is a catholic hospital run by the Catholic Health Initiatives, which runs 170 hospitals in 17 states.

And Catholics believe life begins at conception, and use that belief as their basis for opposing abortion/passing abortion restrictions and contraception laws, as well as the basis of all of their 50 plus cases against the Obamacare contraception mandate.

So getting "caught" basically making the defense that life does not start at conception is a bit embarrassing. Instead of "Life begins at conception" the argument becomes "life begins at conception unless that's really inconvenient for us"

Further complicating this is the fact that, although the Hospital won at the district and appeals court level, there is currently a State Supreme Court date set for this case.  And once it got national attention the Bishops decided to "review" the case and found the defense "morally wrong" and say it should not have been used in a statement released this morning.

And that has put the Church into something that can best be described as a "no win" situation, best exemplified by the star trek concept of the "Kobayashi Maru scenario"

Basically in the Star Trek world the "Kobayashi Maru scenario" is a simulated computer test given to all prospective members of star fleet (basically the peaceful exploration navy for non nerds) in which the ship called the "Kobayashi Maru" goes down behind enemy lines, with many of its crew still alive. Any attempt to retrieve the ship will lead to war and the likely death of the retrieval team, however not attempting to retrieve the ship will cause the deaths of all aboard.

Basically its practicality vs morality, the first option (peace and personal survival) being practical but immoral     (leaving people to die) and the second is moral (attempting to save people) but totally impractical (start a war, and likely die in the attempt anyways).

So their is no good answer/way out of the situation.

And thats exactly where the Catholic Church now is.

See by using the defense they did, that fetuses are not people under the law, the lawyers for the hospital took the totally practical approach. Which to be fair is their jobs.

When you want to plead "not guilty"  a lawyers job is to find whatever defense he or she can to "make it so". Their one and only concern is the verdict, they arnt really supposed to be concerned with any outside issues.

Which of course opened the Church up to attack on hypocrisy grounds. But on the flip side what fool doesnt take every legal avenue open to him to not be found guilty?

I mean think about it, if the hospital drops their defense at the supreme court, not only do they loose this case, and however much money gets awarded to the husband, they set a standard that says its totally cool to sue any catholic for perceived violations of their religious teachings, even when those violations are not illegal, or just any situation where church teachings conflict with law, and the church will not actually defend itself, because they cant actually use their teachings in a court of law, so they will just not use available options and basically defaultly plead guilty/no contest to cases they could win.

How many lawsuits do you think the church would needlessly lose once everyone realized that and sued them on grounds where catholic teachings prevented them from defending themselves legally?  

They would likely loose millions very very fast, increasing the costs of any catholic organization operation, possibly to the point of making it impossible for them to function.

But on the flipside, what the Bishops did was the totally moral thing to do (according to their beliefs) even if everything I laid out above is true, its a small price to pay for the moral high ground. This is the standard to which Catholics claim they should be held, and that is the price to pay for it.

But then again, those are some pretty bad consequences. What if the hospital just decides to ignore the Bishops ruling and push ahead with the "not a person" defense in the supreme court, because they would like to stay in business?    

Well that would set a precedent against the idea that "life begins at conception" is actually a moral imperative of the church. Which likely means all the cases against Obama care, and Abortion, and any real restriction on the availability of contraception.

In fact the Catholics might lose what few exceptions from contraception and abortion coverage they already have....I mean they only got those exceptions by claiming "life begins at conception" was a deeply held moral belief, which clearly it wouldnt be if they ignore it when its to their benefit.

Now to be fair, their is a 3rd option for the Church, but its kinda the worst of both worlds. They can cut ties to the Hospital, declare it "non catholic" and stop funding it. The the hospital can continue with its legal defense, and it removes the moral issues from the Hospital, assuming they can survive without the Church support (which is doubtful in most cases).

But the problem for the Church is they would be sending a message to every other hospital to go with option 1 (dont take a valid legal defense) or loose all your funding and support and possibly go out of business. Not to mention when this happens again (and it will if any hospital has good lawyers, since this likely isnt the first time its happened) the Church still get hit with yet another hypocrisy charge every time it happens, even if they keep cutting ties. Which would mean they would be getting sued  and eventually losing the argument on their religious exception.

But yea, there you have it, a real world, 21st century "Kobayashi Maru". And unlike in Star Trek where Captain Kirk hacked into the program and changed the laws of the programs reality so that he could "win" and find a moral and practical solution, I don't think the Church can count on a Deus Ex Machina anytime soon.

Which means they have to choose: possibly get sued out of existence, or risk all contraception related legal exemptions, or both.

Irony Alert: Gun Survivalist Edition

So has anyone heard of The Citadel? And I dont mean the southern military college in South Carolina. I mean the future fortress that's being built by survivalists that is likely going yo be built in Idaho.

If you havnt, heres a small sample from their website as to exactly what they are:

"The Citadel is evolving as a planned community where residents are bound together by: 

• Patriotism 
• Pride in American Exceptionalism 
• Our proud history of Liberty as defined by our Founding Fathers, and 
• Physical preparedness to survive and prevail in the face of natural catastrophes — such as Hurricanes Sandy or Katrina — or man-made catastrophes such as a power grid failure or economic collapse."

Thats more or less their mission statement above (they dont call it that, but that does seem to be it function as near as I can tell by its use.)

They then go on to describe the finished idea as

"The model will be similar in many ways to that of Disneyland. It is walled, gated, private property with controlled access. People pay to enter and agree to the rules because they see value in doing so. It is all based on a voluntary agreement between the owners of the property and those who want to come inside. Millions of people visit Disneyland and interact peacefully. It's exceptionally rare to hear of any serious problems. The key is that those people want to be there and understand what is expected of them. Surprisingly similar to what we are doing."

The artist rending of what the Citadel will look like finished. Note the double walls, guard towers, interior defensive walls  and the distinct lack of Micky Mouse.

Now if you keep reading around their website they explain several of the reasons, most of which deal with the fact that land is cheap and readily available in Idaho. But the other reasons well:

"The growing trend of the state of Idaho actively recruiting firearms-related businesses. "
"It is populated with solidly independent and intelligently freedom-oriented people. State and local governments are pre-disposed to Constitutional Liberty and strongly supportive of Second-Amendment Rights."

So basically its a walled compound of second amendment enthusiasts, who fully expect the worlds governments to collapse and wont be there to help you and as they themselves point out, have already ensured their survival (that is the survival of the "members of the government") and the founders of citidel basically only want to be able to do the same

In fact the only requirement to live there (once its built) is an agreement to abide by what they call the "Citadel Patriot Agreement", which reads more or less like the groups Constitution, and consists of 13 clauses, some of which are below (so you get the idea)

"Two: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older governed by this Agreement shall annually demonstrate proficiency with the rifle of his/her choice by hitting a man-sized steel target at 100 yards with open sights at the Citadel range. Each Resident shall have 10 shots and must hit the target at least 7 times.

Three: Every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 and older governed by this Agreement shall annually demonstrate proficiency with a handgun of choice by hitting a man-sized steel target at 25 yards with open sights at the Citadel range. Each Resident shall have 10 shots and must hit the target at least 7 times.

Four: Every able-bodied Patriot of age within the Citadel will maintain one AR15 variant in 5.56mm NATO, at least 5 magazines and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The responsibility for maintaining functional arms and ammunition levels for every member of the household shall fall to the head of household. Every able-bodied Patriot will be responsible for maintaining a Tactical Go Bag or Muster Kit to satisfy the Minuteman concept. Details TBD and posted elsewhere.

Nine: Each household will provide ONE able-bodied Patriot (aged 13 or older) who shall muster one Saturday per month for Martial/Support Training for neighborhood-level training & musters, as set forth by the Militia Commanders of the Community. No single Patriot shall be required to muster more than once per quarter. In the course of every calendar year every able-bodied Patriot and every full-time resident in each household must participate in at least three musters (one neighborhood-level and two full-scale). Part-time residents must participate, in good faith, to the best of their ability."

And then my personal favorite, which kinda speaks for itself

"Eight: All Patriots, who are of age and are not legally restricted from bearing firearms, shall agree to remain armed with a loaded sidearm whenever visiting the Citadel Town Center. Firearm shall be on-the-person and under the control of the Resident, not merely stored in a vehicle."

Yep. Mandatory requirement that you must always have a gun on you, just in case "they" come for you or something.

Oh and a warning they put up as well, just in case your on the fence and not sure this is for you

"Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Establishment Republicans will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles,”

Basically this is a bunch of  right wing "taking america back to the founders" pro second amendment, government is coming for your guns crazies.

Which brings us to the irony part of this: although the Citadel doesnt yet exist, in fact they havnt even purchased the land for it yet they did get something. According to their website they are the proud new owners of a 07FFL license.

See the citadel is going to be primarily supported by the III Arms company (which as you may notice printed the above map), which is a gun manufacturer. A 07FFL license is the license that allows for the manufacturer and assembly of guns.

And by the way, the 07FFL is issued by the ATF, you know the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, AKA the federal government, AKA the people who are trying to take your guns and liberty away creating the need for the citadel in the first place.

Yea thats right, the the first thing "the people who think the federal government is coming for your guns did" was get a permit to make guns, exactly the type of thing the government wouldnt do if they were coming for your guns, thereby rending their entire premise for existing totally and completely void.

Which means except for Wayne LaPierre and the NRA, its unanimous, even the crazy survivalist wack jobs, who feel the need to build fortresses in the middle of some of less populated american states in case the government is out to get you, acknowledge, as the rest of us do the government isnt actually coming for your guns, they are totally fine with you having them, in fact they even want you to make more.

Marco Rubio rocky road to 2016 and what does a "Secretary of Defense" do anyways?

So I dont know if you've heard of Marco Rubio, tea party backed republican senator from Florida, currently in his first term, was supposedly on the short list for the GOP VP nomination in 2012, and is supposed to be one of the leading contenders (already) for the republican nomination in 2016.

Problem is, he might be off to a bit of a rough start. See it appears future president elect Rubio, doesnt actually understand who does what in the government.

So I'm sure you know this, but at the moment President Obama is in the process of getting his second term cabinet confirmed by the senate. It started last week with the 94-3 vote to confirm now former Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State. It continued with the confirmation hearings for Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama's pick for the new Secretary of Defense. His confirmation vote will likely be held next week. But at least one US senator wont be voting for him, Marco Rubio. Now that in and of it self isnt a problem, of course any senator should only vote for people he actually thinks would be good in the job......the problem is, from his stated reasons for opposing Hagel, Rubio actually doesnt know what the job is, so has no idea who would or wouldnt be good at it.

Quoting the Senator directly

“After carefully reviewing Senator Hagel’s record on a number of issues, I cannot support his confirmation as our nation’s next Secretary of Defense. I oppose his confirmation because of his views on U.S. policy toward Cuba, his past opposition to tough Iran sanctions, his questionable comments in the past about U.S. support for Israel, his support for direct, bilateral negotiations with North Korea and, most importantly, my belief that he will usher in a new era of austere defense budgets that will severely impede U.S. national security by hampering readiness and radically limiting the global force projection of our military."

Now lets go item by item here, just to fully show the problem:
1)"his views on U.S. policy toward Cuba".  Now I understand why, Rubio the son of two Batista era Cuban immigrants, but who told their son they were Castro refugees (which of course he believed, because why not, and the fact they lied is not his fault), would have strong feeling on Cuban policy.  But heres the issue; you know who sets the US policy on Cuba? That would be the President of the United States. AKA the job Rubio presumably wants in 4 years, and not the job Chuck Hagel is applying for.

Oh and you know who  helps implement the President's policies on Cuba? Yea that would be the Secretary of State. Again not really the job Hagel is after.

You know what impact the Secretary of Defense has on Cuba policy? basically none. So yea reason 1 boils down to "I object because of something thats not part of your job"

2) "his past opposition to tough Iran sanctions" Oddly enough, this breaks down basically exactly the same way as 1. The President decides on sanctions the Sec of State helps implement them.  Now yes, the Sec of Defense might be called on to enforce them via military force on occasion, but he has nothing to do with coming up with them, or even putting them in place.

3) "his questionable comments in the past about U.S. support for Israel" Want to guess who actually controls this one? I'll give you a clue, its the same answer as  1 and 2. Well actually this would also likely fall partly on the UN ambassador as well, but oddly enough, thats also not the job Hagel is after. And yes again to be fair Sec od Defense would possibly have some involvement in the execution of policy but nothing to do with coming up with it. And really unless their is a war against or a full withdrawal from Israel by the US, sec of defense doesnt have anything to do.  

4)  "his support for direct, bilateral negotiations with North Korea" Do I even have to say it this time? its the same two jobs I've mentioned for every other answer (and again maybe the UN ambassador) . Again its not even remotely under the purview of Defense.  

So yea, the basic take away here is that according to Marco Rubio thinks Chuck Hagel would be an absolutely terrible Secretary of State. Execpt that he thinks the job of Secretary of State is apparently handled by Secretary of Defense. Which probably means he has no idea what the Secretary of State does either. In fact that looks pretty likely.

See on of the committees Rubio sits on in the Senate is the committee on Foreign Relations. Now oddly enough the FR committee is the sole committee that gets to question the potential nominee for Sec of State. Which means we can actually check to see if Rubio asked Kerry about any of those issues (Israel, Iran sanctions, Cuba, and North Korea)  and well it turns out the answer is no.

In fact Rubio only asked Kerry two questions: one on America's role in the world (which actually THE important question for a Sec of State in fairness) and this one:

"We move over to the Middle East, where Israel quite frankly has been concerned. Whether they admit it publicly or not, that for many, for the early years administration, they were more focused on the Palestinian question as the biggest issue in the Middle East. When in fact, the biggest issue in the Middle East is that Iran wants a nuclear weapon so they can attack Israel, and potentially other nations. We’ve talked about Iran. In 2009, the people of Iran took to the streets, in defense of the principals that we say we stand for, and the President of the United States says ‘We are not going to interfere in their sovereignty’. That totally demoralized the opposition."

Now ok to be fair, the Sec of State likely would be heavily consulted before we made any military incursion into Iran, but still you know who would be primarily responsible for stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?........yea that would be the Sec of Defense, the job Chuck Hagel is applying for.

Oh an by the way, in case you were wondering John Kerry confirmation got out of committee with unanimous consent, meaning they all voted for him for Sec of State.

Which mean Marco Rubio seems to be opposed to Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense because he would be a horrible Secretary of State, and voted for John Kerry for Secretary of State in part because he would be Secretary of Defense.

Oh and I almost "forgot" there was one other objection to Hagel as Secretary of Defense, and its probably the most embarrassing for Rubio, since it proves hes a bit more confused about who does what then just Sec of State and Defense.

5)"my belief that he will usher in a new era of austere defense budgets" You know who handles the Defense Department budget? That would be the 535 members of the united states congress. The House crafts the budget, and then votes on it and sends it to the senate. Now as it turns out if any of the 100 Senators in the senate dont like the defense budget, they can put a "hold" on it, basically stopping the bill from coming to the floor, meaning it cant pass until your personal objections are fixed and you release the hold. Now you know who one of those 100 senators is? Marco Rubio.

Yea see any defense budget of any kind austere or not, can not pass without the explicit permission of Marco Rubio. In fact the Sec. of Defense, like all other Secretaries has exactly nothing to do with the budget, they can and do but in recommendations  but those are pretty much always ignored by congress (especially in the case of Defense). So yea, starting the 3rd year of his term, it seems no one has actually told the senator what he job allows him to do.

Which means he is now rather embarrassingly going to vote against Chuck Hagel, in part because he, United States Senator Marco Rubio, doesnt know what the job of a United States Senator is.

Like I said, if he wants to run for President in 2016, this a pretty bumpy start. On the upside, he's got 3 years to study up......