Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty March 19, 2014 Perhaps Obama Will Play the Fiddle at Tonight's Democratic Fundraisers Today's headlines, from Moscow… In a gilded Kremlin hall used by czars, Vladimir Putin redrew Russia's borders Tuesday by declaring the Crimean Peninsula part of the motherland — provoking a surge of emotion among Russians who lament the loss of empire and denunciations from Western leaders who called Putin a threat to the world. From Kiev: Ukrainians, however, were convinced from Putin's speech to the Russian Duma that the conflict could not remain cold. Many said they found some of Putin's phrasing chilling, including his statement that "We're one nation. Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities." They also noted that his proclamation of respect for Ukrainian territorial integrity rings hollow when he has already invaded and taken control of one region, and has an estimated 60,000 troops massing at the shared border. Vitali Klitschko, the former world heavyweight champion and a leading member of Ukraine's Parliament, underscored what many Ukrainians are thinking when he addressed the Russian threat, pointedly using the words "when the Russians invade" instead of "if." From Simferopol:
A member of a pro-Russian militia group is reported to have been killed in the same gun battle that claimed the life of the Ukrainian soldier earlier. There's some confusion over how the militia man died and it seems that he may have been killed by his own side rather than shot by resisting Ukrainian forces. From Sevastopol, an old woman in a pro-Russian crowd, lovingly holding an image of Joseph Stalin: 
And from Washington: President Obama stumps for a minimum wage hike Wednesday by appealing to specific television markets. The president sits for interviews with stations based in New England, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Dallas, Phoenix, and San Diego. He has asked Congress to increase the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour. Also on Wednesday, Obama will host the screening of a new film about Cesar Chavez, the farm worker who campaigned for labor rights. Just in case you thought this was a productive use of his time, "The odds that Congress will pass an increase in the U.S. minimum wage before the November elections are so low that even the nation's lobbyists are largely ignoring it." That's not all Obama has going on today: "President Barack Obama, the nation's No. 1 college basketball fan, is going to make his picks public on Wednesday." Let's Send Dave Weigel Some Attaboys for the 'GOP Lawmaker Principle' Readers, I know you, as a whole, don't think that highly of Slate's Dave Weigel -- or at least not as highly as I do. But sometimes his b.s. detector works quite well, and he's willing to call out the rest of the press on their bad habits and most inexcusable expressions of bias. Here's Weigel at his best, discussing what he calls, "the GOP Lawmaker Principle": As the national electoral plight of Democrats increases, so does the incidence of stories about obscure state Republican lawmakers. Sure, state lawmakers are important. One of the grand ironies of politics is that people are more likely to know the politicians they're distant from (the president) than the ones with portfolios that cover them at the micro level (school board members). Every Congress contains a substantial number of former-state legislators, and in this age of declining local media, not many of them have been scrutinized. But as a rule, if you see the phrase "GOP lawmaker" in a headline, your click will usher you into a world of back-benchers from Bismarck and Jackson and Dover and Sacramento, not the people currently threatening to take the Senate back from Democrats. The Lawmakers are anonymous until they screw up, and when they do, they are often easier to grab hold of then, say, front-running South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rounds. If the lawmaker were famous, his name might make it into the hed. But he's not famous, so the story is about right-wing insanity that happens to come from a politician who may or may not represent you — click to find out. A couple of recent examples of the phenomenon, with the number of votes he last received and the Facebook popularity of the item on HuffPost alone. March 17: GOP Lawmaker Says Businesses Should Be Allowed To Deny Services To Black People. The lawmaker: South Dakota Sen. Phil Jensen. Votes won in last election: 5,722. Facebook shares/likes: 18,000. March 14: GOP Lawmaker: 'Public Education In America Is Socialism' The lawmaker: Ohio state Rep. Andrew Brenner. Votes won in last election: 31,385. Facebook shares/likes: 9,000. March 11: New Hampshire GOP Lawmaker Jokes About 'Battered Women': 'I Still Eat Mine Plain.' The lawmaker: New Hampshire state Rep. Kyle Tasker. Votes won in last election: 3,469. Facebook shares/likes: 9,500. February 28: Republican Lawmaker Apologizes For Saying Men Should Be Able To Rape Women If Abortion Is Legal. The lawmaker: Maine Rep. Lawrence Lockman. Votes won in last election: 2,188. Facebook shares/likes: 30,000. February 18: GOP Lawmaker Claims We 'Could Use' Twice As Much Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere. The lawmaker: Utah Rep. Jerry Anderson. Votes won in last election: 6,476. Facebook shares/likes: 7,000. Now, these lawmakers may indeed be genuine morons and knuckle-dragging embarrassments to the GOP who deserve criticism, mockery, and efforts to get them tossed out of office at the earliest opportunity. Some of them certainly are. We on the right have a duty to be on the lookout and prevent blowhards, Neanderthals, and lunatics from claiming to speak for us. And Lord knows, we conservatives have spotlighted our share of idiot state Democratic lawmakers. But the question is when and why a previously-obscure state lawmaker who's a couple quarts low on common sense, elementary knowledge, good taste, or basic human empathy deserves to become national news. "Little-Known State Lawmaker Says Something that's Offensive and Idiotic" isn't really that exciting a headline. Dave points out the obvious — when the real news — the state of the economy, the state of the Obamacare rollout, the state of the world — is bad for Democrats, the mainstream media ratchets up its search for another Todd Akin or Rush Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke nasty names. Right now Democrats are desperate for another convenient shiny-object story to come along. Thus the regularly-scheduled comparisons of the Koch brothers to Voldemort. A Vast Conspiracy of Conspiracy Theorists Is out to Get Us Allow me to present that awkward moment when conspiracy theories stop being a cute, mostly harmless form of amusement: Most parents don't listen. Only 1.8 percent of kindergartners get exempted from vaccinations, according to NBC News. But the number is higher in some states. In Oregon, the rate is 6.4 percent, with some counties hitting double digits. In California, Marin County has an exemption rate of nearly 8 percent. The more kids go unvaccinated, the greater the chance that diseases can get a foothold. They usually are imported from abroad, but the absence of vaccination is a boon to their spread. A study in the journal Pediatrics found that the 2010 whooping-cough outbreak in California — when the state had the highest number of cases since 1947 — hit hardest in areas with high levels of nonvaccination. In 2013, measles cases tripled nationwide. Outbreaks were centered in religious communities in Brooklyn, N.Y., Texas, and North Carolina that had resisted vaccination. New York City has another small outbreak right now. I'm betting the figures cited by The Boss above coincide a great deal with these newly-released figures: About half of American adults believe in at least one medical conspiracy theory, according to new survey results… In fact, in addition to the 37 percent of respondents who fully agreed that U.S. regulators are suppressing access to natural cures, less than a third were willing to say they actively disagreed with the theory. With regard to the theory that childhood vaccines cause psychological disorders like autism and the government knows it, 69 percent had heard the idea, 20 percent agreed with it and 44 percent disagreed. The only conspiracy theory with which more than half of the respondents disagreed was that a U.S. spy agency infected a large number of African Americans with HIV. At what point does a population's willingness to believe in vast conspiracies, without evidence, become a severe cultural impediment? ADDENDUM: Of course it's time for Michelle Obama to take Sasha and Malia to tour China, without President Obama. Cost to taxpayers will be revealed much later after some FOIA requests, but as Lonely Conservative notes, "Mrs. Obama's 2010 trip to Spain cost taxpayers at least $487,000 and her trip to South Africa came in at around $424,000. The White House will not release the cost of the trip to China or many other details citing security reasons."
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