Scott Brown asked not what his country can do for him, but what he can do to further tank his Senate campaign. Antonin Scalia once argued for the execution of a man who turned out to be innocent, making it the kindest thing he's ever done. And Joe Biden declared that the U.S. will follow ISIS "to the gates of hell," somewhat awkwardly clarifying that "Hell is where they'll reside." The vice president then added the U.S. will follow ISIS to "hell's leasing office" where ISIS will be "refused a month-to-month rental agreement." This is HUFFPOST HILL for Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014:
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HEALTH SPENDING TICKS UP - Jeff Young: "After five years of historically low inflation, national health care spending will grow a bit faster this year, according to a federal audit released Wednesday. The expected increase is due to the economy's continued recovery, millions gaining health benefits from Obamacare and more baby boomers signing up for Medicare." [HuffPost]
OBAMA: U.S. WILL 'DESTROY' ISIS - “Our objective is clear, and that is: degrade and destroy ISIL so that it’s no longer a threat, not just to Iraq but also to the region and to the United States,” Obama said while in Estonia ahead of the NATO summit in Wales. “The United States will continue to lead a regional and international effort against [that] kind of barbaric and ultimately empty vision.” [NYT]
Joe Biden, meanwhile, has been watching the 2004 movie "Troy" on repeat: "Vice President Joe Biden says America will follow the terrorists who have killed two journalists 'to the gates of hell.' ... Biden said the American people 'are so much stronger, so much more resolved' than any enemy can understand. He says the U.S. won't stop until the militants are brought to justice. Biden said: 'Hell is where they'll reside.'" [AP]
BOEHNER: IMMIGRATION REFORM COULD HAPPEN NEXT YEAR - Elise Foley: "House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Tuesday that immigration reform could still happen in the relatively near future, but only if President Barack Obama enforces current law and does not follow through with his plans to change deportation policies administratively. 'I’ve outlined to the president in July that the House, the Congress, ought to be dealing with immigration reform,' Boehner said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, according to a transcript. 'It wasn’t likely to happen this year because of the flood on the border, and the president’s own pounding his chest about using his phone and his pen. But I did outline that, you know, there’s a possibility that Congress could take this issue up next year.'" [HuffPost]
Let's help them shut that whole thing down: "A new television ad in the Colorado Senate race shows a group of women nodding approvingly as the candidate speaks in favor of a provocative idea: selling birth-control pills over the counter. The twist is that the idea comes not from the Democratic candidate, Sen. Mark Udall, but rather from his Republican challenger, Rep. Cory Gardner, who once supported outlawing abortion and some forms of contraception." [WSJ]
Haircuts: Mark Blumenthal (h/t Mark Blumenthal), Arthur Delaney.
FORMER ABRAMOFF LOBBYIST PISSED AT THINGS ENDORSES MICHAEL GRIMM - HuffPost Hill's Former Abramoff Pissed At Things, who recently partook in the Ice Bucket Challenge in support of the carried interest loophole, has put aside his dislike of federal law enforcement to endorse Michael Grimm. "Nobody likes seeing FBI agents go to the pokey more than FALPAT, but from a lobbying standpoint Michael Grimm (R-NY) is great. And by 'great,' I really mean 'corruptible,' and by 'corruptible', I really mean 'awesome.' Ernst & Young, get your extenders requests in now before it is too late!!!" Thanks, FALPAT!
DAILY DELANEY DOWNER - Football season is almost here! You know what that means: mega-rich team owners extorting free stadiums out of local taxpayers. Congrats, Oakland Raiders. [SFGate.com]
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200,000 IMMIGRANTS TO LOSE INSURANCE - How many times do we have to remind you that Emma Lazarus said NOTHING about sick people. We only want the robust and able-bodied poor and tired people. AP: "More than 200,000 immigrants who bought insurance through President Barack Obama's health care initiative could lose their coverage this month if they don't submit proof this week they are legally in the country, but language barriers and computer glitches are hindering efforts to alert them. The government mailed letters in English and Spanish last month notifying about 300,000 people that if immigration and citizenship documents aren't submitted by Friday, their coverage under the Affordable Care Act will end Sept. 30. However, few seem to be responding." [AP]
RON JOHNSON... JUST, WOW - "Now if you'll excuse me, I must get back to mansplaining numbers to Tammy Baldwin." Igor Bobic: "In his four years in the Senate, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has never witnessed the type of sexism detailed in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's (D-N.Y.) new book. Moreover, he thinks Gillibrand should name the male Senate colleagues who she said sexually harassed her, so they can appropriately 'explain themselves.' 'If you’re going to throw out accusations, my guess is you’d probably ought to name names,' Johnson said Tuesday on 'The Steve Malzberg Show,' as quoted by BuzzFeed. 'If you’re going throw out those kinds of accusations, you ought to give people a chance to explain themselves.' ... In the Tuesday interview, Johnson sought to set the record straight. 'It was not me' and 'and I’ve never seen that kind of behavior in the United States Senate,' he said." [HuffPost]
LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS NO HOMO - Though he forgot to cite the clause in the Napoleonic Code barring two dudes getting married at the local magistrate's office. Ryan Reilly: "Bucking a nationwide trend, a federal judge in Louisiana upheld a state ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, writing that 'any right to same-sex marriage is not yet so entrenched as to be fundamental' and that gay marriage was 'inconceivable until very recently.' Feldman noted that his was the only federal court to uphold a gay marriage ban since the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act last year. 'It would no doubt be celebrated to be in the company of the near-unanimity of the many other federal courts that have spoken to this pressing issue, if this Court were confident in the belief that those cases provide a correct guide,' Feldman wrote." [HuffPost]
KOCH STRATEGIST: MINIMUM WAGE LEADS TO FASCISM - Not to be confused with the Social Security Trust, which leads to a particularly nasty strain of agrarian socialism. Lauren Windsor: "At a political strategy summit hosted on June 16 by the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch, Richard Fink, their top political strategist, told the private audience that when he sees someone 'on the street' he says, 'Get off your ass, and work hard like we did.' 'Psychology shows that is the main recruiting ground for totalitarianism, for fascism, for conformism, when people feel like they’re victims,' said Fink. 'So the big danger of minimum wage isn’t the fact that some people are being paid more than their value-added -- that’s not great. It’s not that it’s hard to stay in business -- that’s not great, either. But it’s the 500,000 people that will not have a job because of minimum wage.'" [HuffPost]
Antonin Scalia, apparently adopting a "TELL THE OTHERS WHAT YOU SAW" approach to law enforcement: "A North Carolina death row inmate exonerated by DNA evidence on Tuesday was once held up by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as an example of someone who deserved to die. When the court declined to review an unrelated death row case out of Texas in 1994, Justice Harry A. Blackmun issued a dissenting opinion arguing that capital punishment is cruel and unusual, and therefore unconstitutional...'For example, the case of an 11-year-old girl raped by four men and then killed by stuffing her panties down her throat,' Scalia wrote in Callins v. Collins. 'How enviable a quiet death by lethal injection compared with that!'" [HuffPost]
SEXIST CAMPAIGN AD IS SEXIST - It's almost as bad as those "Please your man with our coffee" ads from the early 60s. Laura Bassett: "The National Republican Congressional Committee released an ad on Monday that features a thin model -- apparently intended to represent [Arizona Congresswoman Ann] Kirkpatrick -- strutting back and forth across the screen in heels with a suitcase on wheels. Her head and shoulders are cut off in the shot throughout the 30-second ad, and the female voice in the background says Kirkpatrick 'carries a lot of baggage.'" [HuffPost]
Scott Brown wants you to know that you'll have to build that: "Here's the thing, people say, what are you going to do to create jobs, I am not going to create one job, it is not my job to create jobs. It's yours." [American Bridge's industrious tracker]
Racist ad is racist: "The latest ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee's independent expenditure arm stars a West Virginia coal miner who has been outspoken on issues surrounding the Aug. 9 shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri." [HuffPost's Samantha Lachman]
BTW: Michael Brown had no felony record, contrary to conservative smears.
BECAUSE YOU'VE READ THIS FAR - Here is a frog befriending a cat.
FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT MARK SANFORD IS IN CONGRESS - His conscious uncoupling is not going well. AP: "U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford said Wednesday that accusations and requests made by his ex-wife Jenny in their contentious divorce, including that he undergo a mental evaluation, are 'preposterous, crazy and wrong.' Attorneys for Jenny Sanford, in a family court motion last week, want a judge to limit the South Carolina Republican's visitation with his youngest child. They also ask that Mark Sanford undergo psychological tests and take anger management and parenting courses. 'The different accusations and requests made are, by their very nature preposterous, crazy, and wrong,' Mark Sanford said in a statement released to The Associated Press." [AP]
COMFORT FOOD
- The "Game of Thrones" opening sequence redone in the style of Saul Bass.
- Super high-tech turtle-tracking device
- Fantastic 1979 clip of Oscar Peterson giving Dick Cavett a piano lesson.
- Forty of the strangest college traditions.
- A glitch in "Madden 15" makes one of the players 1-foot-tall.
TWITTERAMA
@iowahawkblog: WE WILL SEEK A BROAD MULTINATIONAL COALITION TO DEVELOP A COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY FOR CONTAINING YOU THROUGH GATES OF HELL
@timothypmurphy:I would only click on a video of Phil Robertson on ISIS if ISIS were a drug
@LOLGOP: Fox News finally has a military analyst on who wasn't directly involved with the disastrous Iraq War.
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