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......

In defense of republicans and illegals.

Ok I'm sure this will not surprise my regular readers (especially since I'm pretty sure my regular readers are all related to me :P) but I'm pretty liberal on most issues.

And not shockingly that includes immigration, I am totally in favor of the dream act, and think they entire system, including legal immigration needs to be reformed, it shouldn't take years or decades to get here legally. I'm also in favor of leaving any illegal immigrants who are already here and not a threat alone.

But there is one area in which I am totally on the republican side, and if you read the above paragraph carefully you probably already caught it, and thats on the issue of the word "illegal immigrant"

Since Immigration reform seems to be the big issue in Washington, what with President Obama touring the country to promote his plan, and since the GOP was basically obliterated in terms of the Hispanic vote (getting about 20%) in the last election, its kinda become a hot button issue. And not shockingly the GOP has decided they need to do major Hispanic outreach for the next election.

Now memos seem to be surfacing everywhere, and plenty of republicans are also saying publicly the GOP needs to drop a whole lot of their "anti Latino" rhetoric, specifically their use of the terms anchor baby and illegal immigrants.

Now the anchor baby one is a good idea, in part because, like death panels, sharia law being used in the US and in person voter fraud, its not real, doesn't happen and is used a made up boogeyman to try to scare people. . Pregnant women are not crossing the border en masse just in time to have babies here. Yes they have children, but usually after they have been here for a while and are settled, they arnt having the kids to avoid deportation, according to pretty much every study..  

Illegal Immigrant however is a different story. That's 100% accurate. One of the "rights: of a county or nation is to decide who gets to be a member of that country or nation. Think of it like a club membership, if you want in you gotta follow the clubs membership process. If you dont follow that process and therefore dont get real membership, arnt supposed to be allowed in, but if you do and pass yourself off as a member, its only because you cheated and lied to get in.

Its the same for countries, except that unlike a club our "membership rules" have the weight of law. So if you dont follow them, your breaking the law, which makes your actions illegal. Specifically your immigration actions. Therefore because you immigrated illegally (got in without permission) your an illegal immigrant.

Its the most accurate and descriptive term of who these people are and why their being here is problematic.

And lets be honest, the two usual liberal retorts to the label are bullshit.
1) "no human being is illegal" Your right, but the thing is, no one is saying they are.  Stop being a lazy shit and actually read far enough to get to the second word "immigrant" thats the problem, this person,. who we all agree is legally a person, did not immigrant legally, therefore they are an illegal immigrant.

2) "Being Illegal is no a crime". Actually yea it is. In fact being a crime is the definition of illegal. Now to be fair its only a misdemeanor, so its not a major crime. Its right up there with prostitution, public drunkenness, bad driving, and smoking a joint (in most states).  And generally speaking its about as dangerous as any of those (and much less dangerous then bad driving). But a crime is a crime, so its still illegal.

Its not even close to being equivalent to rape, murder, arson, assault, or all the other felony crimes. And that for the record is the real republican problem.

Its not that they call it, accurately, illegal immigration, its that they treat it as a national epidemic that is going to destroy the country, then excuse rapes as not being "legitimate" or "forced". Thats the issue. its treating the minor crime like a major problem, and the major crime like it doesnt really happen that's really the problem.

Or at least part of it. The rest of it is assuming, acting and basically claiming all illegals look like this:

GOP US Senator Marco Rubio. FYI he was born here.

Because they dont. Sure the majority of illegals likely are some variant of Latino, but Asians make up a pretty big chuck of illegals too. And last I checked their is no huge Asian population in Mexico, so that Fence anit gonna do shit.

Thats the other thing, a fair number of illegals actually enter this country from Canada, which makes if you can do it. I mean it is the longest border in the world, and mostly patrolled. you can literally cross it in many places just by walking across the street. Hell we even have 1 bar in Minnesota and a house in New York (and likely a couple other places I dont know of) that are bisected by the border. So enter from one end, leave from the other, and you just became an illegal immigrant, easy as that.

But no one talks about putting a fence up on that border, or tightening the border patrol or putting drones up there. You know why? Well it could be that most Canadians look something like this:

Boldly going where no Canadian has gone before

By the way, historically speaking, you know who the largest group of illegal immigrants are dont ya? white people. Back in the day we used to have pretty tight quotas on how many people of a specific country we would let in, especially on eastern European counties and Ireland. Yet both of those groups came here in far larger numbers then the quotas allowed....because they did so as illegal immigrants.

And heres the real kicker, while the numbers are not as high, white people still come to this country illegally all the time.

And again thats the real GOP problem. Its not that they are accurately using the term illegal Immigrant. Its that they use the term in such a way as to apply to only a specific group of people, brown skinned people from Latin America, and operate on the assumption that all illegals come from their and all brown skinned people might be illegal and all "yellow" and white skinned people cant be illegal and are all supposed to be here.

And they can use whatever term you want, "Illegal immigrant" "Undocumented immigrant" "border jumper" "darth vader" ect, until they fix THAT problem, it doesnt matter, and they wont make inroads with latinos, or anyone else for that matter.

So how about we keep the one actually fair, accurate and fully descriptive terms left in politics ("illegal immigrants") and actually fix the underlying problems in the GOP outreach to Latinos? 

Felony Stupid: Constitutional Amendment edition.

You know, I gotta be honest, I dont really expect to have a job where I have to swear an oath to something, but I know if I did, I'd be damn sure to read the thing I had to swear a oath too.

Sadly though, that doesnt appear to be a job requirement or even apparently a good idea to some people.

And it gets worse, because a lot of the time, those same people who never read the Constitution get elected, and then try to propose law and even amendments to the Constitution that they never read.

Such seems to be the case of US Congressman from  Alabama Mo Brooks, who has proposed an amendment that would make it possible to impeach the president for a budget deficit.

See under Brooks' plan, congress would need a 4/5th vote in both houses to raise the debt ceiling (which as I keep harping on, basically means "pay the bills" at this point), except in "war time" which would only require a simple majority.

BTW, nothing requries a 4/5ths majority, peace treaties, other treaties, constitutional amendments and even impeachment itself, only require 2/3rds. Just to give you an idea of where he is setting the bar.

Now the "trade off" for the high bar on the debt ceiling is that the president can do anything that is constitutional to keep the budget balanced (and therefore out of debt)................with one exception of course, "The President may not order any increase in taxes or other revenue measures to enforce the Amendment,"

I've mentioned before about how and why you actually would need to raise taxes to have the government we want, but the short version is, to have the government Americans want, we could cut everything they dont want to 0, and we still wouldnt have enough money coming in to pay for it, and this is still true (although slightly better) even after the fiscal cliff tax increases. And thats just taxes, not other things that would count as revenue increases (like cracking down on tax cheats and closing loopholes)

Ah, but their is one last step. See if the president CANT get the budget balanced for any given year, he can be impeached for failure to do his job.

Now a couple of things to keep in mind about the amendment itself:

Were it ever to pass (and it wont), impeaching the president, EVERY president, would actually be an easier thing to do then voting to increase the debt ceiling (2/3rds to impeach vs 4/5ths to raise), so their is actually an incentive to impeach rather then fix the problem. And second, because of the ban on anything having to deal with revenue, it comes with an incentive to basically not pay your taxes (since cracking down on tax cheats is politically defined as a "revenue raiser" by the republican party), thereby basically ensuring we will never have any money of any kind.....except from stupid people who dont realize they dont have to pay

So this basically boils down to a "impeach the president for free card" especially when you consider one final fact, and one that Congressman Brooks amendment doesnt deal with......the Constitution as currently written, which Mr. Brooks has never read.  

See think back to the "trade off" part, the president can do anything that's constitutional to balance the budget. Well see here's the problem, from Article 1 Section 8 AKA the enumerated powers clause that spells out exactly what congress can do:

"The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;..." (the list includes a bunch of things not relevant making war, passing treaties ect so I stopped the list here)

Basically, according to the Constitution the president's legal authority as it relates to the budget is exactly "nothing". He cant do a thing about the budget, except sign off on budget bills congress gives him, thats the total limit of his power.

Oh and a further consideration: Article 1 Section 7 of the Constitution "All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills."

And Congressman Brooks amendment does nothing to change the text of those two sections.

Now even though republicans don't like to publicly admit to it, EVERY budget raises some revenue, so basically all spending bills must start in the house. (you cant pay for anything without "rasing revenue" as its usually defined even if that payment is cutting another program as an "offset", the fact the money was moved into the new program is a "raise in revenue for that program")

So according to the Constitution, the House has 100% of the control over the budget, and should Mr. Brooks amendment become law, if the house cant pass a budget, or the senate refuses to pass the house budget, we impeach the president.....who is neither in the House or the Senate, and cant do anything about the issue in question. In other-words we could call this the "Dodging responsibility/blame the guy who didnt do it" amendment

Seriously, a senate filibuster (of the budget) would lead to a presidential impeachment. So would a bill intentionally so unpopular it couldnt pass the House.

Where's the logic in that?

Near as I can tell, it doesnt exist, so I can only see too options

The first is the easier one to believe personally, which is that despite being in his second term, Mr Brooks has never read the Constitution and therefore has no idea how stupid his amendment actually is, earning him the title of "Felony stupid" (although if you got a better term for trying to change something you never read, I'm open to suggestions)

Or option B. Mr. Brooks DOES know the Constitution, knows exactly what it says, and know exactly what his amendment would basically do (freebie to impeach the president simply by refusing to do his own job)....and just figures no one will catch on to the "scam" despite the way the bill is written. And since the "hole in the bills logic" isnt even remotely hidden or disguised, he clearly thinks the rest of us are too stupid to read. And if your trying to scam someone, leaving what is basically a giant flashing sign to what the scam is is also felony stupid.

A wise man one said something about getting the government you deserve.....for the people of northern Alabama who just reelected this guy, you might want to take note.