Category: Stupid

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D’oh!

I was looking up some data on Loctite™ thread locking compounds and was perusing an online brochure (PDF).

And then I saw this.

Since the 1950s, Henkel has served the defense market. While taking a leadership role in supporting the U.S. Military’s efforts with dedicated resources, Henkel has developed products and specifications for high performance adhesives, sealants, coatings and surface treatments. Today, thousands of assemblies in military vehicle, ordnance and other device applications use Loctite®, Alodine®, Multan®, Bonderite® and Turco® products.

In isolation, the quote sounds pretty innocuous, until you examine the accompanying picture.

Isn’t that a Russian MiG-29?  Why yes, it is!

How does this have anything to do with, “taking a leadership role in supporting the U.S. Military’s efforts?”

Oh ……… Right ……… It doesn’t.

Who Knew that Sarah Palin was the Smart Republican in 2008?

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Facepalm!

Because, in support of spending billions on border security, John McCain just compared the border fence to the Berlin Wall:

“I think that, first of all, the legislation concerning beefed up border security removes any validity to the argument that border security is not sufficient,” McCain said during an appearance on CNN. “I mean, this is not only sufficient, it is well over sufficient. We’ll be the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall so that’s why I think this amendment was very important.”

Seriously, you are comparing border security measures to the Berlin f%$#ing Wall, and you are supporting this measure, you are too stupid, or too senile, to cut your own meat.

Our IP Regulatory Regime Does Not Work

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Case in point, Internet music streaming service Pandora has bought an FM radio station in South Dakota to reduce its royalty payments:

Pandora is angry about the royalties it’s paying to music publishers, so the company is making a bold move: It’s buying a terrestrial radio station in South Dakota mainly to score lower rates.

The radio station buy is the latest salvo in Pandora’s ongoing legal fight with the performance-rights group American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). Pandora says ASCAP discriminates against the company by charging it higher royalty rates, as well as letting publishers pull their song catalogs from Pandora while keeping them available for competitors.

“Certain powerful music incumbents see Internet radio as a threat to the status quo,” Christopher Harrison, Pandora’s assistant general counsel, wrote in a blog post published on The Hill.

To combat that alleged discrimination, Pandora bought the Rapid City, South Dakota, station KXMZ-FM for an undisclosed amount.

Terrestrial radio stations and the Internet properties that own them “were given preferential treatment” through an ASCAP agreement with the Radio Licensing Marketing Committee (RMLC) last year, according Harrison’s blog post.

Pandora says the KXMZ acquisition will let the company qualify for the lower-fee RMLC license. According to Pandora, ClearChannel-owned rival iHeartRadio has such a license because it also owns a terrestrial station.

I’m on Pandora’s side in all this.

Our current IP regime encourages this sort of regulatory arbitrage, and this does little to encourage the production or more music.

All it does is keep record company executives’ brothers-in-law in cocaine.

Paul Ryan Calls the NSA Surveillance “Creepy”, and He is Right

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Look at those dead eyes, he knows creepy

Seriously, makeing Paul f%$3ing Ryan right on ANYTHING is the epitome of fail:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) expressed misgivings with the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance programs, suggesting on Monday that the activities “go way beyond the scope” of what the federal government has been authorized to do by laws like the Patriot Act.

 “It comes across as creepy,” the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee said in an interview with the Wisconsin radio station WJRN. “I understand FISA court orders to go after some known person, and their phone records and whoever they’re communicating with. But to do a blanket dragnet nationwide, that seems to go way beyond the scope of the law that I’m familiar with called the Patriot Act.”

The fail is strong with the Obama administration.

More than any sitting president I have ever seen, Obama seems to obsess over his legacy.

Well, this is your legacy.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever.™

This Has Disaster Written All Over It

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You’ve doubtless heard about the rebound in housing prices.

Well, it turns out that it’s a flood of Wall Street money behind much of this.

This is completely insane. You cannot manage single family rental housing from

The last time the housing market was this hot in Phoenix and Las Vegas, the buyers pushing up prices were mostly small time. Nowadays, they are big time — Wall Street big.

Large investment firms have spent billions of dollars over the last year buying homes in some of the nation’s most depressed markets. The influx has been so great, and the resulting price gains so big, that ordinary buyers are feeling squeezed out. Some are already wondering if prices will slump anew if the big money stops flowing.

“The growth is being propelled by institutional money,” said Suzanne Mistretta, an analyst at Fitch Ratings. “The question is how much the change in prices really reflects market demand, rather than one-off market shifts that may not be around in a couple years.”

Wall Street played a central role in the last housing boom by supplying easy — and, in retrospect, risky — mortgage financing. Now, investment companies like the Blackstone Group have swooped in, buying thousands of houses in the same areas where the financial crisis hit hardest.

Blackstone, which helped define a period of Wall Street hyperwealth, has bought some 26,000 homes in nine states. Colony Capital, a Los Angeles-based investment firm, is spending $250 million each month and already owns 10,000 properties. With little fanfare, these and other financial companies have become significant landlords on Main Street. Most of the firms are renting out the homes, with the possibility of unloading them at a profit when prices rise far enough.

………

The story, though, often looks more complicated on the ground. Joe Cusumano, a real estate agent in Riverside County, Calif., said that in recent months 90 percent of his business had been for companies like Invitation Homes, a Blackstone subsidiary. Home values in Riverside County have risen by 15 percent in the last year, according to CoreLogic.

But Mr. Cusumano said he wondered if faraway investors would properly maintain the homes they buy. He said that Invitation Homes had been willing to put money into the properties, but he was not so sure about the other players. He also worries what will happen when these investors start selling, as they inevitably will.

The first question is not whether the big investors will keep up tens of thousands of properties. It’s whether they can manage tens of thousands of single family homes.

I have dealt with a single family home managed by a local property management firm. It was a complete clusterF%$#.

If they honestly think that they can manage single family homes for properties they are nuts.

Or maybe they are just lying.  They are banksters, after all.

Epic Fail

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John Sidney McCain III goes to Syria. He takes a picture with the noble freedom fighters. One small problem: it turns out that two of the guys are terrorist who kidnapped religious pilgrims :

Everything was going relatively smoothly following John McCain’s surprise visit to hang out with Syrian rebels this week until Lebanon’s Daily Star reported that one of the “brave fighters” pictured on the senator’s Twitter is “a known affiliate of the rebel group responsible for the kidnapping of 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims one year ago.” If so, McCain’s office said, that would be “regrettable.”

 “According to families of the remaining captives and one of the released men, Anwar Ibrahim, one of the men standing alongside McCain in photographs released by the senator’s office, is Mohammad Nour, the chief spokesman and photographer for the Northern Storm kidnappers,” according to the Daily Star. “Ibrahim and other members of the kidnapped family said they recognized Nour, and another man affiliated with the group, also identified as ‘Abu Ibrahim,’ immediately after seeing the photos.”

So, John McCain thinks that he knows who the good guys are.

Here’s a thought, if you cannot tell who is the good guys are, it’s best not to choose sides.

The Stoopid!!!! It Burns Us!!!!!

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This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

In response to the collapse of I-5 bridge north of Seattle, Washington State Representative Ed Orcutt,(a Republican, of course) thought that the concerns were overblown, because, “11 of the 12 Sections of the Bridge Are Still Standing“:

In the wake of the I-5 bridge collapse, the progressive activist group Fuse put together an online petition, urging state legislators to “Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!”

 ………

 Hard to read that as a controversial request, unless, of course, you are state Representative “Angry Ed” Orcutt (R-Kalama), the ranking Republican on the house transportation committee. Via email, Orcutt responds defensively to petitioners, objecting to any effort to “leverage more tax dollars” in response to the Skagit River bridge collapse:

[I]t is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

Dude, it’s not a bridge any more, it is a f%$#ing pier!!!!

Or, to quote yet another movie:

Garry: The generator’s gone.

 MacReady: Any way we can we fix it?

 Garry: It’s “gone”, MacReady.

*What, you’ve never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.

Full letter after the jump:

From: “Orcutt, Rep. Ed”
Date: May 28, 2013, 12:23:47 PM PDT
To: XXXX
Subject: RE: Fix our crumbling roads and bridges!

 XXXX,

 Many people have misunderstood terminology used in the aftermath of the I-5/Skagit River Bridge collapse.

 This bridge is deemed functionally obsolete — not structurally deficient. Functionally obsolete basically means that the width of the lanes do not meet current design widths. In other words, if it were to be built today, it would need to be wider.

 Since the incident, I have been on a conference call with the Governor (which included WSDOT and WSP officials); two briefing calls with National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials; and have met with NTSB officials on the deck of the bridge. From NTSB to WSDOT, it is clear that the reason for the collapse was due to a collision with the super structure of the bridge — not a lack of structural integrity of the bridge. The bridge would indeed be standing today had the truck’s load NOT rammed the super structure of the bridge. In fact, 11 of the 12 sections of the bridge are still standing.

 It is important to note also, that DOT has specifically stated that if a bridge were deemed unsafe, it would be taken out of service. So, when you approach a bridge and see that it is open, please know that DOT has deemed it safe enough for the traffic using it.

 I agree with you that we must maintain our infrastructure to assure it remains safe, but let’s not confuse this incident or try to use it to leverage more tax dollars when the cause of this collapse had nothing to do with the availability of tax dollars.

 Ed

 Representative Ed Orcutt
20th Legislative District

 Olympia Office:
408 John L. O’Brien Building
PO Box 40600
Olympia, WA 98504

 * ed.orcutt@leg.wa.gov
( 360.786.7990

Narcissistic Twaddle from “Liberal Hawks”

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The Washington Post published an article about how the Liberal Hawks are cowed because of their failures in Iraq and Libya:

For interests on both sides of Syria’s civil war, this has been the week to increase the pressure. Hezbollah sent reinforcements to the troops of President Bashar al-Assad, and Russia reiterated its intention to furnish the regime with weapons. At the same time, Republican Sen. John McCain secretly visited rebels and promised to push the Obama administration to arm the retreating forces. The European Union allowed its weapons embargo to lapse as nations such as Britain and France appear increasingly eager to aid the opposition fighters.

But amid the burst in outside engagement, one influential group seems noticeably silent. The liberal hawks, a cast of prominent left-leaning intellectuals, played high-profile roles in advocating for American military intervention on foreign soil — whether for regime change or to prevent humanitarian disasters. They pressured President Bill Clinton to intervene in Bosnia, provided intellectual cover on the left for President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq and urged President Obama to engage in Libya. But even as the body count edges toward 100,000 in Syria and reports of apparent chemical-weapons use by Assad, liberal advocates for interceding have been rare, spooked perhaps by the traumatic experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan and the clear reluctance of a Democratic president to get mired in the Middle East. Call them Syria’s mourning doves.

“Everybody has their own ghosts to deal with,” said Vali Nasr, a former Obama administration official and leading proponent of intervention in Syrian. “But those people understand that what is going on in Syria cannot go on indefinitely.”

Why the f%$# should we listen to these folks.

  • They were wrong about Iraq.
  • They were wrong about Libya (where Islamist rule, and ethnic cleansing of black Africans is the rule).
  • They have been agitating for a military strike against Iran, which would probably extend the rule of the mullahs by decades, as Saddam’s attack in the 1970s cemented their rule.

And now their feelings are hurt because people don’t take their push for military intervention seriously.

It’s just a no fly zone ……… Only a no fly zone is very clearly an act of war:

Kudos to Josh Rogin for breaking the news that “the White House has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for a no-fly zone inside Syria.” But wouldn’t it be a more powerful story without the euphemism?

Relying on the term “no-fly-zone” is typical in journalism. But that is a mistake. It obscures the gravity of the news.

Here’s how an alternative version of the story might look: “The White House has asked the Pentagon to draw up plans for bombing multiple targets inside Syria, constantly surveilling Syrian airspace alongside U.S. allies, and shooting down Syrian war planes and helicopters that try to fly around, perhaps for months.”

The term “no-fly-zone” isn’t analytically useless. It’s just that folks using it as shorthand should make sure everyone reading understands that, as Daniel Larison put it right up in a headline, “Imposing a No-Fly-Zone in Syria Requires Starting a New War.” That becomes clearer some paragraphs later in Rogin’s article, when he discussed Senator John McCain’s advocacy for a “no-fly-zone.” “McCain said a realistic plan for a no-fly zone would include hundreds of planes, and would be most effective if it included destroying Syrian airplanes on runways, bombing those runways, and moving U.S. Patriot missile batteries in Turkey close to the border so they could protect airspace inside northern Syria,” he wrote.

(emphasis mine)

I would also note that anyone who thinks that this operation would be limited to air and air defense assets should look at the Libyan intervention, where it turned almost immediately into direct close air support for the rebels.

This has disaster written all over it.

There is a reason that “Liberal Hawks” were described as “Useful Idiots” by Tony Judt.

Shoot Me Now!

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Well, this sucks:

President Obama held a private meeting with top national security journalists on Thursday afternoon following his national security policy address at the National Defense University in Washington, POLITICO has learned.

Present at the meeting were Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist; Gerald Seib, the Wall Street Journal’s Washington bureau chief; Fred Hiatt, the editorial page editor of the Washington Post; David Igantius, the Washington Post columnist; Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic correspondent and Bloomberg View columnist; and Joe Klein, the Time Magazine columnist.

Seriously.

This is like a rogues gallery of people who are wrong about everything.

This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.*

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I am referring, of course, to former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller, who’s latest brainstorm is that Obama should appoint Kenneth Starr as a special prosecutor to investigate the latest ginned up faux scandals against the Obama administration:

Republicans are howling for President Obama to name a special prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of Tea Party groups. The president should call their bluff.

 The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility. The list of candidates could start with Kenneth Starr, who chased down the scandals, real and imagined, of the Clinton presidency. It might include Patrick Fitzgerald, who was special counsel in the Valerie Plame affair, winning the conviction of Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, and who has successfully prosecuted two corrupt governors of Illinois, one from each party.

This is batsh%$ insane.

It’s also ahistorical. Ken Starr did not pursue any real scandals, that was done by his predecessor, Robert Fiske, who uncovered significant corruption in Arkansas. Starr had no interest beyone his witch hunt.

Ken Starr???? This is beyond the wildest dreams of the writers for The Onion.

I cannot believe that anyone can be this obtuse.

Neither can the people reading his post.  The comments are nearly universally disparaging.

The stupid, it burns us.

*What, you’ve never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.

So Not a Surprise

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CNN’s Jake Tapper has discovered that the emails leaked to the press on Benghazi were altered to make the State Department (Hillary Clinton) look worse:

CNN has obtained an e-mail sent by a top aide to President Barack Obama about White House reaction to the deadly attack last September 11 on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, that apparently differs from how sources characterized it to two different media organizations.

 The actual e-mail from then-Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes appears to show that whomever leaked it did so in a way that made it appear that the White House was primarily concerned with the State Department’s desire to remove references and warnings about specific terrorist groups so as to not bring criticism to the department.

 ………

 Whoever provided those accounts seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. While Nuland, particularly, had expressed a desire to remove mentions of specific terrorist groups and CIA warnings about the increasingly dangerous assignment, Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his e-mail on the State Department’s concerns.

 The context of the e-mail chain is important.

 Different officials from different agencies were going through iterations of talking points for Congress.

As the inestimable Marcy Wheeler notes, this has David Petreaus’ finger prints all over it:

It has taken three days for the bleating press corps in DC to wade through the roll-out of Benghazi talking point emails and realize that the tension behind the emails — as has been clear from just days after the attack — is that Benghazi was really a CIA, not a State, Mission, and therefore CIA bears responsibility for many of the security lapses. So State, in making changes to the emails, was making sure it didn’t get all the blame for CIA’s failures.

 ………

 They might have also said, “since February, people tied to CIA’s mission have twice been harassed by militia members, suggesting our OpSec was so bad they knew we were in Benghazi.”

 ………
They might also have said that the “trusted” militia, February 17 Brigade, trained by David Petraeus’ CIA, whose career legacy is based on false claims of successfully training locals, appears to have allowed the attack to happen (and, critically, delayed CIA guards from heading to the State mission to help).

 Note that Congressman Frank Wolf is just now showing some interest in why CIA’s vetting of the militia central to the mission’s defense was so bad. Maybe if CIA had included that detail in their self-serving initial talking points, Congress would have turned to this issue more quickly, particularly since we’re currently training more potentially suspect militias in Syria.

 In other words, the story CIA — which had f%$#ed up in big ways — wanted to tell was that it had warned State and State had done nothing in response (which, perhaps unsurprisingly, is precisely the story Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz are trying to tell). The truthful story would have been (in part) that CIA had botched the militia scene in Benghazi, and that had gotten the Ambassador killed.

 ………

 David Petraeus, who tried and failed to get his preferred spin of the attack in Benghazi accepted by the Obama Administration, who subsequently got fired, purportedly for f%$#ing and possibly sharing classified information with his mistress, went to Dick Cheney’s propagandist to try to get his preferred spin adopted after the fact.

This is a classic example of why we should not give too much power and influence to our intelligence agencies: When they are the master, rather than the servant, their primary mission is covering up their own f%$#-ups, not providing good intelligence.

Oops

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Following the latest Benghazi wankfest, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has said that he is OK with the administration’s response:

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Corker (R-TN) said Wednesday that he’s “fairly satisfied” with the Obama administration’s account of events that led to the deaths of American diplomats in Benghazi last year.

 “We need to know were these people culpable or not. If they were, why are they still on the payroll? Other than that, I’ve been able to read all the cables. I’ve seen the films,” Corker told MSNBC. “I feel like I know what happened in Benghazi. I’m fairly satisfied.”

Someone is not sticking to the script.

I wonder when Rush is going to take him to the Woodshed.

Not The Onion

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The head of the US Airforce’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been arrested on sexual assault charges:

A key point in last year’s Academy Award nominated documentary “The Invisible War” was that the military was structurally incapable of adequately policing sexual assault in the armed services. As if to bolster the filmmakers’ case, the Air Force officer in charge of its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Branch has been arrested and charged with sexual battery.

“The DoD estimates that, on average, there are more than 50 sexual assaults involving military personnel each day. The only thing unusual about this particular assault is that the accused was actually arrested and charged, and that senior officers in his chain of command cannot intervene to prevent his prosecution,” Kirby Dick, the director of “The Invisible War,” told CQ Roll Call. His film’s key tenet is that the military does not follow standard criminal justice procedures in sexual assault cases, keeping them within the chain of command, and that this has helped lead to an epidemic of sexual assault in the armed forces.

Lt. Col. Jeff Krusinski was arrested by Arlington County, Va., police on Sunday in a Crystal City, Va., parking lot, as first reported by ARLnow. According to the police report “a drunken male subject approached a female victim in a parking lot and grabbed her breasts and buttocks. The victim fought the suspect off as he attempted to touch her again and alerted police.” Krusinski was arrested, charged and held on a $5,000 unsecured bond.

I am not particularly surprised.

The US military has long history of (at best) indifference to issues of sexual assault, as evidenced by the recent spate of get out of jail free cards issued by senior officers.

Dropped from My Blogroll

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Matthew Yglesias has been dropped from my blogroll.

He just wrote an article saying that it’s OK that all those people died in Bangladesh, it’s a choice made by “rational actors” to trade safety for jobs:

I think that’s wrong. Bangladesh may or may not need tougher workplace safety rules, but it’s entirely appropriate for Bangladesh to have different—and, indeed, lower—workplace safety standards than the United States.

The reason is that while having a safe job is good, money is also good.

Shades of Larry Summers suggesting that we ship toxic waste to Africa because they need the money.

The workers did not have a choice about safety. They knew that they, and their families, would face starvation if they got fired for not going into an unsafe building. The choice was made by their evil bosses.

This is a constant theme of his writing, and I am no interested in his faux liberal bullsh%$.

While there are people on my blogroll with who I profoundly disagree with because they provide insight into foreign view points.

Retired Maryland Republican hatchet man Joe Steffen, and Russian/Orthodox Christian Nationalist Stanislav Mishin are two such examples on my blogroll.

His view, which can best be described by the phrase, “Even the liberal The New Republic.”

It’s all about self-entitled white guys who never have to wonder about where their next meal is coming from play the Michael Kinsley counter-intuitive idiocy game in an attempt to prove how smart they are.

It’s dull, it’s predictable, it’s bereft of any real insight, and it’s off my regular reading list.

Awwww!!! Rick Perry’ Feelings are Hurt!!!!

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Texas’ Business Climate in a Nutshell

So, following the fertilizer plant explosion that killed 14 people, Sacramento Bee cartoonist Jack Ohman accurately depicted the political-industrial of Texas, and Governor Rick Perry demanded an apology, and his butt boy/Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst demanded that he be fired.

It really does amaze me just how much the “Real Men” of the Republican Party whine like little bitches when someone makes a reasoned critique of their policies.

It’s more than wimpy, it’s stupid.

No one but a few people in central California would have known about this cartoon if he hadn’t made an issue of it, but he just couldn’t let it slide.

I should thank him.  I never would have seen the cartoon but for his foot in his mouth.

It’s Official: the SCOTUS’ Resident Troll Does Not Give a Sh%$!

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There really are not a whole bunch of formal rules for a sitting Supreme Court justice.

They are famously exempt from the ethics regulations that apply to other Federal judges.

That being said, there are a number of customs that have always been scrupulously observed.

One of them is not to make statements that appear to prejudge something that might come come before the court.

Well, Fat Tony just pissed on that one, and went one further, and made public statements on a case that is currently being decided by the court:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told university students that key provisions of the Voting Rights Act had evolved from an emergency response to racial discrimination in 1965 to an “embedded” form of “racial preferment” that would likely continue indefinitely unless the court acts to end them.

Justice Scalia, speaking Monday night at the University of California Washington Center, elaborated on remarks he made in February during Supreme Court arguments over the act’s Section 5, which requires states and localities that historically discriminated against minority voters to obtain federal approval to change election procedures.

Section 5 functions as a racial entitlement because the federal government doesn’t take a similar interest in protecting the voting rights of white people from racial discrimination, Justice Scalia said.

Congress repeatedly has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, most recently in 2006, when President George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension. At February arguments, Justice Scalia dismissed overwhelming congressional support for Section 5 as “very likely attributable to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement.”

Seriously. They heard the arguments, and they haven’t made a decision yet, and he is making public statements on this?

Is he nuts? Is it Alzheimer’s? Or maybe he realizes that he will never be Chief Justice, and he no longer gives a sh%$.

I do not know why he did this, nor do I care, but it is clear that he is no longer (if he ever was) fit to be a Supreme Court justice.

I’m Not Sure Who’s the Rat, and Who is the Sinking Ship………

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But following the discovery of a complaint filed by his ex-wife for trespassing at her home, the national GOP is pulling out all resources from his campaign:

National Republicans are pulling the plug on Mark Sanford’s suddenly besieged congressional campaign, POLITICO has learned — a potentially fatal blow to the former South Carolina governor’s dramatic comeback bid.

Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

“Mark Sanford has proven he knows what it takes to win elections. At this time, the NRCC will not be engaged in this special election,” said Andrea Bozek, an NRCC spokeswoman.

Sanford is facing Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, a Clemson University administrator and sister of comedian Stephen Colbert, in a race that has grabbed the national spotlight.

The NRCC’s move comes hours after Tuesday night’s report by the Associated Press that Sanford’s ex-wife, Jenny Sanford, filed a court complaint accusing him of trespassing at her home in early February – which would be a violation of the terms of their divorce agreement.

Republicans said they were caught off guard by news of Jenny Sanford’s complaint. They worry other damaging revelations about Mark Sanford’s personal life that they aren’t aware of could come out in the coming weeks.

The calculus here is simple: The district is pretty red, and any money that they spent on Sanford now they would also have to spend in 2014 if he won, so it is better to let Colbert-Busch to have a few months in Congress, where her vote won’t count.

That way you do not have Mark Sanford around your neck like a corpulent albatross.

Sarah Palin Did One Right Thing, and Alaska Republicans Vote to Overturn It

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She changed the royalty structure for oil extracted from the state, and now Republicans have reversed this in a give away to big oil:

The Alaska Senate on Sunday afternoon approved the oil-tax bill that passed the House 13 hours before, sending to Gov. Sean Parnell the measure he had sought to save billions of dollars for Alaska’s leading industry.

The Senate vote was 12-8 to concur with the revised bill that the House approved 24-15 just before 2 a.m. Sunday morning (on reconsideration, three Republicans switched to support the bill). The Senate vote came past the midway point of the 90th day of the 90-day session.

Parnell said that Alaska’s current tax regime, which he backed as lieutenant governor in 2007 when it was pushed by Gov. Sarah Palin, is broken. It is taking so much money from industry, he said, that producers have been investing elsewhere, explaining the decline in oil production here. His bill, modified but not changed drastically in either the House or Senate, effectively wipes out Palin’s tax policy, Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share, or ACES.

The new bill ends ACES big progressive tax steps, where tax rates increase as the price of oil rises. Parnell and supporters said the progressive tax was punitive toward industry. ACES supporters agreed that the tax took too much money at high oil prices, but the remedy was to lower the rate — not toss it.

Today’s Republican Party in Alaska: too radical, too stupid, and too obsequious to big oil for Sarah Palin.

That is truly a major mind f%$#, and Alaska, arguably the state which is least suited to the actual cultivation of bananas, is an a clown like banana republic.