Monday morning roundup

Georgia Governor Nathan Deal, a two-term Pub, caves to the goose-stepping jackboots of the Human Rights Campaign, several major corporations and the NFL and vetoes a religious-liberty bit that mirrors the national-level bill that Billy Jeff the Zipper signed into law in the 1990s, the gist of which is that the burden is on government to prove there's some compelling interest to make Christian business owners conduct business in violation of their faith. (No, such bills don't specifically mention Christians  - or homosexuals, for that matter - but does anyone doubt why such bills are necessary?)

San Francisco's mayor bans official travel for city employees to North Carolina over that state's legislature overturning a law that would have permitted Girls (who think they're boys) and boys (who think they're girls) from using each other's restrooms. Of course, the city by the bay has a history of using such bans to make statements. In 2010, the state was Arizona and the issue was immigration, and in 2014 the state was Indiana and the issue was a religious-freedom law.

Oh, sheesh, now there's a lawsuit about North Carolina's action, filed by a group of the terminally confused.

Speaking of California, the Land ofLa-La offers more proof that the minimum wage is bad and wrong:

deal that would raise California's minimum wage to $15 an hour was met with a mixture of joy and anxiety across the state Sunday.

Some workers and labor officials hailed it as a breakthrough in providing higher-wage jobs in fields where it's a struggle to make ends meet. But some business owners feared the shift would hurt their bottom lines -- and perhaps even put them out of business.

The debate is likely a preview for the weeks ahead as the minimum wage proposal works its way through Sacramento.

Selwyn Yosslowitz said that minimum wage hikes add increased pressure to restaurants, which already operate on very slim margins. With the minimum wage going up, Yosslowitz said he's going to have to rethink his menu and what dishes his restaurants serve.

"First, you have to raise prices, otherwise you'll be out of business," said Yosslowitz, president of the Marmalade Café, which operates seven Southland restaurants and an outlet at LAX. Restaurant owners also have to think about "re-engineering the menu" to require fewer kitchen workers.

"We will try to re-engineer the labor force," he said. "Maybe try to reduce the number of bus boys and ask servers to bus tables."

Death toll in the jihadist slaughter of Christians in that Lahore park is now up to at least 72.

When it comes to supposed anti-corruption icons to admire, Hillionaire share knows how to pick 'em:

The Brazilian president praised for “setting a global standard” on how to fight corruption by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton now has protestors calling for her impeachment thanks to her own alleged corruption.

The New York Times reported that this month’s protests calling for Dilma Rousseff’s ouster, including a 500,000-person gathering in São Paulo, were the largest since the protests that toppled Brazil’s military dictatorship in the 1980s. Recent polling shows that 68 percent of Brazilians want the legislature to impeach Rousseff, who has made clear she will not step down and plans to fight the charges against her.

Clinton praised Rousseff in Brazil in 2012 at the first meeting of the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative co-chaired by Brazil and the United States aimed at fighting corruption.

“I want to commend and thank Brazil, in particular President Rousseff, for the leadership that they have given to this initiative,” said Clinton at the April 2012 meeting in Brasilia. “There is no better partner to have started this effort and to be leading it than Brazil, and in particular, President Rousseff. Her commitment to openness, transparency, her fight against corruption is setting a global standard.”

Despite this praise, Rousseff’s potential impeachment is based on charges that her administration illegally used money from state-run banks to cover up budget shortfalls amid the country’s economic problems

An audit court found that Rousseff borrowed up to $26 billion to pad government accounts in 2014, hiding economic problems that could have ended her reelection bid.

Brazil’s Superior Election Court is also looking into charges that Rousseff brought in money for her 2010 and 2014 elections through an illegal scheme involving state-owned oil giant Petrobras. Rousseff chaired the company’s board of directors from 2003 to 2010.

Rousseff claims that she knew nothing of the illegal Petrobras graft scheme, but other politicians implicated in the scheme say that’s not the case. 

One senator, a political ally of Rousseff who was arrested last year for trying to bribe Petrobras executives to keep quiet about his involvement, recently said that Rousseff “knew about everything” and “benefited from the scheme” she inherited from her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

And from the files of the-pattern-of-the-architect-of-post-America's-planned-decline-getting-his-outstretched-hand-gestures-to-evel-totalitarians-responded-to-with-contempt, check out this statement from the architect of the Cuban revolution:

President Barack Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during his historic visit to Cuba last week, but apparently that does not mean that Castro did not have any thoughts about el presidente norteamericano in his country.

Castro ripped into the president and his words during the visit in El Granma, the official state newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, bringing up Obama's relative youth, the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the role of both countries in ending the apartheid in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent in an article titled "El hermano Obama."

Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama," Castro wrote. "Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old."

Referring to the 1961 failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Castro wrote of the U.S.' "mercenary force with cannons and armored infantry, equipped with aircraft ... trained and accompanied by warships and aircraft carriers in the U.S. raiding our country. Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded."

Castro referred also to Obama's invocation of both countries' role in the end of apartheid in South Africa, remarking upon his country's 1975 intervention in Angola backing the leftist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola against other U.S.-backed revolutionary forces. Ridding apartheid South Africa of nuclear weapons "was not the goal of our solidarity," he wrote, "but [rather] to help the people of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and other fascist colonial rule of Portugal."

In referring to the origins of South Africa's nuclear weapons, Castro mentioned the "help that racist South Africa had received from [Ronald] Reagan and Israel."

"I do not know what Obama has to say on this story now," Castro wrote, adding, "although it is very doubtful that I knew absolutely nothing."

"My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics."

And weep not for the polar bears:

A new study by Canadian scientists once again debunks the notion polar bears are currently being harmed by global warming. Researchers with Canada’s Lakehead University found “no evidence” polar bears are currently threatened by warming.

“We see reason for concern, but find no reliable evidence to support the contention that polar bears are currently experiencing a climate crisis,” Canadian scientists wrote in their study, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Scientists looked at 13 polar bear subpopulations and found “much of the scientific evidence indicating that some polar bear subpopulations are declining due to climate change-mediated sea ice reductions is likely flawed by poor mark–recapture sampling.” This means researchers aren’t able to put together accurate “demographic parameters.”

And that's the state of things on the third stone from the sun.