Last Call For Kentucky's Choice

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds Democrats Jack Conway, Andy Beshear and Alison Lundergan Grimes all trailing their Republican rivals with a little more than four months to go.

PPP’s first general election poll of the race for Governor in Kentucky finds a very tight race. In a head-to-head election, 40% of voters choose Republican Matt Bevin over Democrat Jack Conway, who garners 38%. Bevin is viewed favorably 31/28, while Conway is viewed unfavorably 34/31- a plurality of the electorate has no opinion about each candidate.

“The race for Governor in Kentucky is pretty up for grabs,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “Voters aren’t that familiar with either candidate and as a result we’re seeing a lot more undecideds than we usually would at this stage of the race. This is one where the campaigns really will go a long way toward determining who wins rather than it being preordained from the start.”

Republicans have leads of varying sizes in the down ballot races. In the race for Attorney General, Republican Whitney Westerfield leads Democrat Andy Beshear 41/36. Republican Steve Knipper has a 5-point advantage (47/42) over incumbent Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes in the race for Secretary of State. Incumbent Democrat Adam Edelen trails Republican challenger Mike Harmon by 6 points (33/39). GOP candidates lead for Treasurer and Agriculture Commissioner as well.

It's been a very long time since Republicans were able to run the table at the state level here in Kentucky, but to be fair most of us aren't paying attention to November here in June.  That doesn't mean however that the Dems can slack off.  It just means that with four months to go, that it's time to get in gear.

Suddenly Republicans Want The Power Of Executive Orders Again

With the Supreme Court expected to issue a ruling on same-sex marriage in the next several days, the reactionary right-wing GOP 2016 candidates like Mike Huckabee are looking to reverse everything President Obama has done on same-sex marriage at the federal level.

He said that if elected president, he would simply ignore any Supreme Court decision in favor of marriage equality until Congress passed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide…which he would then veto.

“Until the Congress of the United States puts on my desk a bill that basically defies the laws of Nature and Nature’s God and defies the longstanding tradition of marriage, the federal government will not recognize same-sex marriage because there is no law that requires it and that would be true for the military and it would be true for all federal institutions,” Huckabee said. “If the Congress decides that they want to pass enabling legislation, they could put it on my desk and I would veto it, and they can attempt to override it. That’s the process.”

Huckabee said that even his detractors should sympathize with his anti-gay-marriage stance: “If liberals were subjected to a conservative court that forced them to tithe their income to scripture or forced them to go to church or forced them to believe something that they don’t want to believe, they would say, ‘We can’t do that, that would go against our conscience.’ And I would say, ‘You are exactly right and we can’t have such a ruling. This is why I find this very unsettling is because liberals will rue the day when the sword they use to enact their agenda is the sword of the court rather than to do it by way of the people’s elected representatives.”

Understand that any Republican candidate in 2016 is going to be under tremendous pressure to do this on day one.  Huckabee will brag about being willing to do it, and the bigoted Republican base will demand it from anyone they nominate.

Democrats are running in 2016 to make America a better place.  Republicans are running to punish liberals and the people who voted for Obama.

But tell me again how there's no difference in the two parties, and that you will make things better by not voting.

More Flagging Approval

You thought this flag thing was going to be easy?

.@DrewGriffinCNN’s intv on #ConfederateFlag w/ SC Rep Chumley incl surprising comments on #CharlestonShooting http://t.co/40iWOHz3BS

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) June 24, 2015

Keep it up Republicans, keep blaming the people killed by the guy who took your rhetoric to its endpoint.

Meanwhile, in Glibertarian land...

A lot of the surrounding media-led outrage over the flag seems somewhat cold, given the horror of what last week brought. We had nine black people brutally murdered because they were black and sitting in a church with a history of fighting white supremacy. With all due deference to hatred for a Confederate flag on a pole at the statehouse, this seems like an almost childlike attempt to miss the seriousness of the situation. It’s as if they expect us to say, “Congratulations! You oppose the flag of an army that was defeated 150 years ago. We’re all very proud of you, journalists!” This generation seems to excel at inventing controversies, weighing in on those invented controversies, and then patting itself on the back for being so courageous and open-minded.

The far more frightening reality that such invented controversies avoid is that mankind is full of sin, and that some of us show that sinfulness in racism and murder. Or as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in The Gulag Archipelago:

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The murderer of the Emanuel nine has done something particularly bad, but he isn’t the only person capable of evil out there. And getting rid of a flag is hardly the remedy for the racism and violence that infects our culture. How juvenile to think otherwise.

Wanting to get rid of the Confederate flag is "childlike" and "juvenile" so why bother?  It doesn't cure racism, but neither did, you know, the entire civil rights movement, nor did electing and re-electing Barack Obama magically fix racism in America.

I suppose those were juvenile and childlike acts too.  Since nothing you can do to incrementally fix society can totally fix it, why bother at all, right?

It's like these guys are trying as hard as they can to be as awful as possible.

StupidiNews!

• France has summoned US Ambassador Jane Hartley to appear today to answer charges from WikiLeaks that the American government has spied on the last three French presidents.
• The Obama administration has lifted some restrictions on medical marijuana research, prompting praise from some lawmakers and legalization advocates.
• Authorities in Hong Kong have quietly removed the last street encampments of pro-democracy protesters, bringing an end to nine months of protests over the city-state's self-determination.
• Greek PM Alexis Tsipras is claiming some of Greece's creditors have rejected Athens' offer to unlock bailout aid, prompting a new round of selling in European markets.
• Google is going ahead with the option of an "unsend" button in Gmail, allowing users up to 30 seconds to undo a sent email and rolling it out to all Gmail users this week.