Daily Kos

Reposted from Comics by Barbara Morrill

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Sean Hannity, sociopath:

Fox host Sean Hannity dismissed the murder convictions of a Minnesota homeowner who used excessive force in killing two teenagers who broke into his home, claiming with exasperation, "They broke into the guy's house."

The case was that of Byron Smith, who after his house was burglarized set a "trap" for the neighborhood teen he suspected of being the culprit by moving his car away from his house, hiding in the basement and waiting for them. Sure enough, one broke in and headed down to the basement: Smith shot him twice, bringing him down, then told him "you're dead" before shooting him in the face (Smith taped the entire episode, presumably so the world would later praise his banter.) He moved the body and reloaded his gun; after 10 minutes the teen's friend/partner came looking for him:

Kifer’s footsteps are heard on the stairs and she calls out quietly, “Nick?”

Then comes the sound of more shots. She falls down the stairs. “Oh, sorry about that,” Smith tells her. She screams, “Oh my God!”

Then more shots. Smith tells her, “You’re dying,” and calls her a “bitch,” the AP reported.

After more labored breathing and another dragging sound, Smith calls her “bitch” again. He told authorities that after he moved her, he noticed she was still gasping and didn’t want her to suffer, so he fired under her chin with a 22.-caliber handgun, according to a report in the Pioneer Press. The Star Tribune reported Smith told investigators the last time he fired was “a good clean finishing shot” and “she gave out the death twitch.”

He reported the shootings a day later.

Finishing both teens off execution-style rather than calling the police or ambulance was not a dealbreaker for the Fox News host. His only stated complaint was with the use of language.

Sean Hannity covered the case on the April 30 edition of his Fox News program. While Hannity said he didn't like the fact that Smith had called the slain teens "vermin," he nonetheless questioned the verdict because "they broke into the guy's house." Hannity also suggested that "the judge in that case didn't give all the facts to the jury," and asked, "How could it be premeditated when they broke into his house?" When Fox's Geraldo Rivera expressed disgust at the "coup de grace" shot that killed Kifer, Hannity responded, "You know what, it's easy to say after the fact, 'I wouldn't.'"

This does seem to be the America the NRA is hoping for; one in which you don't just get to defend yourself, but execute the neighborhood kids yourself because hey, they had it coming. And now we've got one of the top show hosts on a news network suggesting that maybe that's not so bad—maybe we shouldn't be judging this guy so harshly because wouldn't you maybe do the same thing, studio guests? (One of said guests declared that Smith should receive the Medal of Freedom for his act, so Sean Hannity isn't even the worst person on the set.)

Am I the only one in America who finds it damn odd that you can (finally, these days) get yourself kicked off network television for making racist comments, at least sometimes, and there has for many decades been an entire system set up in case someone says an uncouth word that needs to be bleeped out, but we regularly have discussions in which show hosts piffle at taking up sniper positions against government officials because hey, government bad, or discussions over whether or not you ought to be able to shoot an already-wounded 17 year old girl under her chin to "finish" her if she's in your basement, and nobody in the big leather chairs bats an eye? There's no "oops" button for that one? No "Cheney switch" that cuts in when someone on the television reveals that yes indeed, shooting the teenagers in the head sounds like a reasonable idea, so long as you don't call them bad words while you're executing them?

Our national tolerance for ideologically backed psychopathy is very, very strange. Our national willingness to egg the most unstable and violent people in America on by showing their acts approvingly on network television, calling them patriots and heroes, plainly implying to all the other violent people that if they had an armed standoff with federal officials trying to enforce certain laws or if they too had a neighborhood burglar they thought they could "finish," they could be called patriots heroes too—that doesn't seem a bit nuts to anyone else?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren joins the growing number of Democratic lawmakers who want to save the internet. In this Facebook post she homes in on the key point—the proposed rule the Federal Communications Commission will consider in two weeks is a big giveaway to corporate interests.

We don’t know who is going to have the next big idea in this country, but we’re pretty sure they’re going to need to get online to do it. Reports that the FCC may gut net neutrality are disturbing, and would be just one more way the playing field is tilted for the rich and powerful who have already made it. Our regulators already have all the tools they need to protect a free and open Internet—where a handful of companies cannot block or filter or charge access fees for what we do online. They should stand up and use them.

The proposal put forward by Chairman Tom Wheeler essentially gives up on the idea of making internet providers treat everybody alike in their access to internet users. Content providers—like Netflix—would have to pay extra to the big internet service providers like Verizon in order to make sure they get on the fast lanes of the internet, and their customers get the experience they're paying for.

This is the route that Chairman Wheeler decided upon after a court struck down the previous rule the FCC was using to enforce net neutrality. But, as Warren argues, just giving in and letting the big guys have the internet isn't the only option the FCC has—and in fact, the court decision that led to this proposed rule gave the FCC a much stronger option. The court made clear that the FCC absolutely has the legal authority to regulate broadband, and it can do it by reclassifying broadband providers into the kind of telecommunications companies they actually are like. That would mean the FCC could regulate them just like wireless operators and phone companies. And enforce net neutrality.

Which is the last thing that the broadband providers want. They've got the ear of Wheeler and inordinate sway with the FCC. The playing field, as Warren would say, is definitely tilted in their favor. The only way to combat that is by the rest of us making a hell of a lot of noise.

Help us stop the FCC from crushing net neutrality. Please sign our petition.

This exchange wins the Internet for the day—it's House Majority Leader Eric Cantor trying to defend the bogus unskewing Republicans attempted with Obamacare enrollments, which I suppose is actually less of a math problem than an honesty problem.

At which point Eric Cantor bows out of the discussion entirely. Smart move.

2:49 PM PT: Charles (aka Brainwrap) goes through the math here. But the basic issue is that Cantor is not being honest with the numbers he's using in that tweet.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson Seattle's minimum wage would rise to $15 an hour, the highest in the country, under a proposal announced Thursday by Mayor Ed Murray. The plan, backed by 21 of 24 members of Murray's advisory committee on the issue, phases in gradually, with different calendars for large and small businesses.

Businesses with 500 or more employees nationally will be required to pay the $15 minimum wage in three years, unless they offer health coverage, in which case they get four years. Businesses with fewer than 500 workers will get seven years to meet $15 an hour, though:

Within the first five years, a “temporary compensation responsibility “ of $15 an hour must be met by combining employer-paid health care contributions, tips received by consumers, and wages. [...]

"This a historic moment for Seattle," Murray said at a news conference Thursday.  "In seven years, a Seattle minimum wage worker will earn at least $4 an hour and $6,240 a year more than people elsewhere in Washington."

Seattle's $15 minimum wage will also rise by 2.4 percent each year once it reaches $15. Washington has had the highest state minimum wage, at $9.32 an hour, though several other states and the District of Columbia are now moving toward $10 or more an hour.

The advisory council members supporting the plan include union and business representatives, with one of the opponents being Socialist City Council member Kshama Sawant, who supports a less gradual phase-in. If she and other activists see the current proposal as too weak, they could seek a ballot vote on the issue.

• Today's comic by Ruben Bolling is Bob figures it out:
  
• Jobless compensation claims rise sharply for second consecutive week: For the week ending April 26, seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment compensation clocked in at 344,000. That's up 14,000—four percent—from the previous week's revised level of 330,000. For the comparable week of 2013, 332,000 Americans filed initial claims. That makes this week the first time since the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that initial claims have been higher than they were during the same week of the previous year. The less volatile four-week moving average was 320,000 for the week ending April 26, up 3,000 from the previous week. For the week ending April 12, the total number of people claiming compensation fell 99,855 to 2,822,340. In the comparable week last year, there were 4,956,474 persons claiming compensation. That decrease is mostly due to the fact Republicans have blocked renewal of the federal emergency compensation program since December.
• It's the 11th anniversary of "Mission Accomplished":

  On May 1, 2003, Richard Perle advised, in a USA Today op-ed, “Relax, Celebrate Victory.” The same day, President Bush, dressed in a flight suit, landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major military operations in Iraq—with the now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” banner arrayed behind him.

  Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a “hero” and boomed, “He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics.” He added: “Women like a guy who’s president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It’s simple.”

  PBS’ Gwen Ifill said Bush was “part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan.” On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, “The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a—on a carrier landing.”

• Al Feldstein of Mad magazine fame, dead at 88: Al Feldstein, who was made editor of Mad by publisher William Gaines in 1956, transformed the satirical publication into a cultural institution, has died. No cause was announced.  

  Under Gaines and Feldstein, Mad's sales flourished, topping 2 million in the early 1970s. In a 1997 interview with the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Feldstein credited Mad's challenges to authority with helping incite the cultural revolution of the 1960s. [...]

  But not everyone was amused.

  Mad once held a spoof contest inviting readers to submit their names to legendary FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for an "Official Draft Dodger Card." Feldstein said two bureau agents soon showed up at the magazine's offices to demand an apology for "sullying" Hoover's reputation by using his name in Mad.

• Crack-smoking, hard-drinking, trash-talking, sexist, homophobic, racist Toronto mayor in rehab:

  Mayor Rob Ford says he’s “ready to take a break” from the mayoral election campaign to “go get help.” [...]

  Ford told the Sun columnist Joe Warmington that he realizes “it’s time” and that he “wants” to “deal with his issues.” He said he is being urged to not leave the mayoral race by people around him.

• Cricket flour and other ways to make insects palatable to Americans:

  The challenge with Six Foods is to convince the rest of America that eating insects is the best thing since sliced bread. When you look at the facts, it’s really a no-brainer: the livestock industry produces 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions, more than all forms of transportation combined, but insects produce just 1% as many greenhouse gas emissions as cows. Raising insects requires far less land, feed, and water than raising livestock, and furthermore, insects don’t feel pain since they don’t have pain receptors (so you can feel less bad the next time one dies from flying into your face as you bike to work).

• Veteran gives up burial plot to lesbian couple:

  Madelynn Taylor, 74, is a retired veteran of the U.S. Navy, serving for six years just prior to the start of the Vietnam War. She also happens to be a lesbian, who was discharged when she and another servicewoman told her superiors she was gay. Taylor fell in love with Jean Mixner in 1995. They married soon thereafter, though few states recognized their union at the time. When her partner died in 2012, Taylor began planning for her own death, asking the Idaho Veterans Cemetery to reserve a spot for herself as well as the ashes of her spouse. They denied Taylor’s request. [...]

  But now a fellow veteran is stepping up and offering a chance for Taylor and Mixner to reside beside each other forever. U.S. Army Col. Barry Johnson (ret.) wrote in an open letter to the Idaho Statesman that he believes that Taylor had served her country and deserves the same rights as everyone else.

• In five years, FISC rejects a single government request for electronic surveillance:

  Last year, the federal government asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the authority to conduct electronic surveillance 1,588 times. Guess how many were turned down? Not a single one. [...] In 2012, FISC didn’t turn down any of the 1,789 government applications to conduct electronic surveillance, either. Same with 2011, and 2010. The last time it turned down an application was 2009, when it denied one.

• New Iowa GOP chairman ripped off widow in real estate deal: Shady shenanigan that provided former Iowa state legislator Danny Carroll tens of thousands at elderly woman's expense caused state to suspend his business partner's law license.
• On today's Kagro in the Morning show: Happy May! Greg Dworkin ponders the end of ESI, working out ACA's kinks, understanding jobs report day, and the dissonance in voters' heads. Why guns win & people lose. Demolition of the WI voter ID law. Time for HomelessPAC!
  
  

In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, Secretary Sebelius confirmed that Health and Human Services has crunched the numbers on Obamacare enrollment and confirmed  that more than 8 million people have indeed obtained private coverage on the exchanges. That includes 5.4 million on the federal exchanges and 2.6 million on the separate state exchanges. In addition to that, more than 3 million young adults have been added to their family plans, with 4.8 additional enrollments in Medicaid and CHIP programs. In this 8 million, 2.2 million—or 28 percent—are between the ages of 18 and 34.

Additionally, HHS released important state-specific information. Greg Sargent has the highlights from some of the states that are most important to Democrats in November.

In Florida, some 980,000 people are now signed up for private insurance through the federal exchange — up from 442,000 at the end of February. […]

In North Carolina, some 350,000 people have now signed up for coverage through the federal exchange — up from 200,000 at the end of February. […]

In Michigan, some 270,000 people have now signed up for coverage through the federal exchange — up from around 144,000 people at the end of February. On top of that, the Medicaid expansion is kicking in, which will add hundreds of thousands more.

Go below the fold for more highlights on today's numbers.

A detailed review of individual House Republicans' web sites shows just how flummoxed Republicans are by Obamacare. They have to say they hate it and it has to be repealed, but a good number of them are forced by the political reality of their districts to say that there's some good stuff there, too, that they insist must be maintained. Hence "repeal and replace." But the "replace" bit is still messing them up.

While the graph shows a vast majority of House GOP members proclaiming their commitment to either repealing Obamacare or repealing and replacing it, the full picture is more complicated. A number of lawmakers in the "repeal and replace" camp also embrace some of Obamacare's most popular provisions. […]

All told, 31 Republican House members express some support for an element of the Affordable Care Act. In each case, they say they favor covering people with pre-existing conditions. Ten websites also include a line supporting policies requiring insurers to allow parents to keep kids on their health care plans until age 26. In addition, two lawmakers express support for Medicaid coverage.

So 31 actually try to come up with some kind of replacement plan that includes the popular provisions of Obamacare, out of the 128 who talk about "repeal and replace." Those replacement plans all include the Obamacare stuff that even Republicans say has to be maintained—specifically coverage for people with pre-existing conditions.

And that is the nut of their problem in trying to come up with a not-totally-bogus plan. There isn't any other effective way to do this and keep the private insurance system than how Obamacare did it. If you're going to cover the sick, expensive people, you have to have everyone signed up to help pay for them. To have everyone signed up, you have to have some kind of mandate that people buy insurance. Or the whole thing collapses. The only real alternative, and it's a very good one, is single payer.

And that's where the Republican flail comes in. They've painted themselves into a corner, or at least the 31 who want to pretend that they're serious lawmakers and care about their constituents have. And they made a losing bet when they went all in on repeal.

Hmm.

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn said Thursday that he still supports the death penalty, even in light of the botched execution in his home state.

“I think it has a deterrent capability,” Coburn said on “Morning Joe,” while also acknowledging that he still doesn’t “like” capital punishment.

First, I would like to direct the nation's attention to the plain fact that we are debating whether and how best to kill people on something referred to as "Morning Joe." This is the sign of a declining empire. This is akin to when Rome chose lowering of the capital gains tax over continued scrubbings of the vomitoriums. We're debating our methods of killing people on Morning Joe. Again, I mean—it does tend to be a subject that comes up quite a lot in other guises. Second, is this like a Cliven Bundy thing, where if you believe something to be true, that makes it true?

Coburn, a physician, said the Oklahoma execution this week in which the inmate died after 43 minutes was the result of human error.

“Anytime you’re doing anything with the body, things can go wrong,” he said.

Good to know. Now if we could just find a senator-lawyer who could tell us that "things can go wrong" when convicting people of capital crimes in the first place, oopsie, spilled milk, etc., we might be getting somewhere.

Pressed on “Morning Joe,” Coburn conceded that the episode raises questions “about the death penalty and whether or not that, in and of itself, is appropriate and whether you can do that humanely.”

Wait, this horrific episode got even Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn contemplating on humaneness? That itself may count as a miracle. If you ever find yourself up for Catholic sainthood and need to write down your bonafides, tell the Church that one was your doing.

What do you do when you're the chairman of the Republican National Committee and you can't rebrand your own party? You try to rebrand the other guys:

If you follow the Reince's link (which I really wouldn't encourage you to do), you'll find out that Republicans think Clinton is trying to "quiet another rebellion on the left." Reince doesn't provide any evidence for that, but he does provide a ton of research proving that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had a hard-fought primary battle in 2008 ... which is news to exactly zero people. Coincidentally, zero is also the percentage chance that Reince's lame trolling will have its intended effect. But I hope he keeps on trying, because a desperate Reince Priebus is a fun thing to watch.

Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson

Senate Republicans blocked a bill raising the minimum wage on Wednesday, but that doesn't mean the issue is going away—and voters may hold Republicans' minimum wage opposition against them.

“This is not the only time you will see the Senate vote on the minimum-wage bill this year. We’ll be back again and again, and we’ll keep trying until we get this to the president’s desk,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and the bill’s sponsor.

In Kentucky, where Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is locked in a tight race with Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes, a January poll found that 57 percent of voters support a $10 minimum wage, and 42 percent say they'd be less likely to support McConnell if he voted against raising the minimum wage. Which is exactly what he did Wednesday.

In New Hampshire, a January poll found that 60 percent of voters support raising the minimum wage to $10. Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, now running for Senate in New Hampshire, ducked and weaved when asked if he would have voted for the bill:

“I haven’t read the bill,” Brown said yesterday. “I certainly would be willing to be part of the conversation, as I have been before.” [...]

“I’ve supported a minimum wage increase before. It’s something that I think needs to be periodically reviewed, but it’s really important to make sure that everyone’s at the table, especially people who are hiring and growing,” he said.

So he hasn't read the bill (pssst ... it raises the minimum wage to $10.10) and he's not saying no, but the "everyone" at the table should "especially" include not the millions of workers trying to pay their bills on poverty wages but the people paying the poverty wages. And then he changed the subject.

With just one Republican voting to move the minimum wage bill forward, rinse and repeat in basically every competitive Senate race in the country. Raising the minimum wage is popular. Senate Republicans voted it down. And Democrats are going to do their best to be sure voters notice—which, politically speaking, isn't a bad position to be in.

Just when you think House Republicans might be becoming a little less obsessed with Obamacare, they go full Benghazi on it, with a "report" that challenges the administration's—and the health insurers—numbers on enrollments. Yes, it's all a big conspiracy to make it look like people want health insurance. The gist of the Republicans' unscrewing is that only 67 percent of people have paid their first premium, so instead of 8 million enrollments, there'd be something like 5.5 million. Except that it's a major distortion of the facts.

The committee staff got their information directly from insurers, but it’s only valid up through April 15. As experts quickly pointed out, that’s too early to get an accurate sense of the payup rate.

Remember, open enrollment officially ended on March 31. And, thanks to the Administration’s extensions, people were still signing up well into April. At the time the Committee requested the information, many of these people would have just received their first invoices for payment. Payment wouldn’t have been due until the end of the month—in other words, Wednesday. Some wouldn't owe first payments until the first of June, because that's when their insurance starts.

And people were signing up in droves at the end of the enrollment period, about 4 million of them in March and the beginning of April. The insurance companies themselves—you know, where the premiums are being billed and paid—contradict the 67 percent estimate in this "report." A WellPoint executive says 90 percent of enrollees have paid, and the CEO of American Health Insurance Plans, the industry's lobbying organization, says that overall about 85 percent of people have paid up. In fact, as Jonathon Cohn points out, the insurers specifically warned the staff of the committee that the data they were providing for the report was incomplete.

That's not the only glaring deception in the report, but perhaps the most brazen. Charles Gaba (Daily Kos's own Brainwrap), who is the number cruncher for Obamacare enrollments, counts myriad ways in which this report is "full of crap."

But it might not be about the enrollment numbers at all, TPM's Dylan Scott argues.

As soon as White House officials started calling the Energy and Commerce report into question, they leapt: How could the White House know, unless it had its own data that it hadn't released?

One might wonder as if that was the intention all along.

This might just be all about trying to prove that the administration is hiding information, just like BENGHAZI!!!! Because they really don't have anything else.